Movies

DanceMadonna’s BackupI’m not in a “La La Land” kind of mood. These strange times call for real life, so I found myself landing on “Strike a Pose.” Watching this 2016 documentary about the dancers who performed in Madonna’s “Blond Ambition” tour — one called it a show “about freedom, freedom as an artist, freedom as a human being” — the word I’m left with is resiliency.The movie, which is available on Netflix, Tubi and iTunes, checks in with the dancers in the documentary “Truth or Dare” 25 years later. One, Gabriel Trupin, has died of AIDS; the others made it out alive, but have lost some glitter along the way. Armed with life experience — a couple have rebounded from rock bottom (drug and alcohol abuse), others are H.I.V. positive — they are defined by determination. “Strike a Pose” can go to dark places with rivers of tears, but, again, it’s real.The dancers in “Strike a Pose” are no longer the boys they were in “Truth or Dare.” They’ve grown up, and they’re looking outward, still dancing and also teaching the next generation — watching it is a painful reminder that dance’s oral tradition of passing on knowledge, body-to-body, is in jeopardy.The men perform solos in their apartments; poetic dances, considered and raw that somehow get to the essence of their art form: don’t stop, which is particularly apt now. For a companion piece there is this performance of “In the Upper Room” on YouTube. Twyla Tharp’s remarkable 1986 ballet set to music by Philip Glass, grainy or not, is another reminder of bravery. This, like, “Strike a Pose,” is a demonstration of courage: through bodies, tenacity and sweat.GIA KOURLASPop MUSICGo GlobalThe world has always been right there in your computer — you just have to press play. Online radio offers special opportunities to learn more about sounds that are percolating in scenes around the globe. It has been particularly robust in London — that’s the home of Rinse FM, the long-running pirate-turned-legit radio station. For more than two decades, it has been at the bleeding edge: You can hear of-the-moment grime and British rap, throwback garage and drum ‘n’ bass and much more. Also from London is Balamii, which embraces an eclectic blend of electronic music, soul, jazz, UK funky, hip-hop and more.Closer to home is the Lot Radio, which ordinarily broadcasts from a shipping container near the Williamsburg-Greenpoint border in Brooklyn. Given the current circumstances, it has now made the switch to intimate video streams, inside the living rooms and kitchens of the D.J.s. It’s a strong reminder that the party is wherever the songs are, and the songs are wherever the D.J. is. That could be anywhere. And you could do it too — the world is listening.JON CARAMANICAmovies and TVBinge CreepsA weekend watching all 12 films in the “Friday the 13th” franchise sounds like heaven for some horror fans. But for a marathon of more snack-size scares, classic horror anthology series are plenty satisfying. (They may also be family-friendly, depending on how well eerie entertainment is tolerated by the kids.) The five seasons of the original “Twilight Zone” (Hulu, CBS All Access) offer smart scripts and A+ acting; start with the popular episodes “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and “To Serve Man.” “The Outer Limits” (Hulu) takes a ’60s sci-fi route to terror, especially in out-there episodes like “The Galaxy Being” and “It Crawled Out of the Woodwork.”If you want to indulge in some ’80s-’90s nostalgia, a good place to start is with the lewd (and sometimes nude) “Tales From the Crypt” (Amazon, iTunes), an HBO series that featured Brad Pitt (“King of the Road”) and Demi Moore (“Dead Right”). Continue the Gen X flashback with six seasons of “The Ray Bradbury Theater” (Amazon Prime), a dark and crafty series adapted from the science fiction writer’s own macabre novels and short stories. “The Crowd,” a first-season creep-fest about accident gawkers, remains a ghoulish delight.For gotcha scares and “Punk’d”-style practical jokes, check out “Prank Encounters,” hosted by Gaten Matarazzo (“Stranger Things”); and “Scare Tactics,” with Tracy Morgan, now streaming on Netflix. These hidden-camera reality shows put unsuspecting “victims” in situations with freaked-out babysitters, campground killers and other weirdos from the horror movie playbook.ERIK PIEPENBURGTheaterA Little SondheimThe lyrics from Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical “Company” now sound less like an invitation and more like a taunt: “Phone rings, door chimes, in comes company!/ No strings, good times, room hums, company.” Had the Broadway season continued, we could have seen “Company,” a masterfully ambivalent 1970 musical, recently reimagined by the director Marianne Elliott, this week.One potential comfort: D.H. Pennebaker’s “Original Cast Album: Company,” one of the great theater documentaries, which films the “Company” cast during a nerve-rending, larynx-shredding, 18-and-a-half hour recording session. But it isn’t streaming anywhere (though YouTube hosts most bits), and honestly Elaine Stritch’s “The Ladies Who Lunch,” somehow both deeply ironic and as lacerating as a straight razor, may not be the tonic anyone needs now.So why not try the note-perfect parody courtesy of the comedy series “Documentary Now!”? In the season 3 winner, “Original Cast Album: Co-op,” available on Netflix, cast and pit musicians gather to record a musical that has already closed. Written by Seth Meyers and John Mulaney, who also appears as the Sondheim-esque composer, the episode froths with Broadway favorites — Renée Elise Goldsberry, Alex Brightman, Richard Kind. Paula Pell steps into Stritch’s hat, shoes and sandpapered throat, growling through 27 takes and an ophthalmology procedure. If we can’t have “Being Alive” live, at least we have this.ALEXIS SOLOSKIClassical MusicA Wunderkind of OperaIn the no-concerts era, some classical music presenters have started offering live-streams of performances. But one crucial online portal, OperaVision.eu, was already scooping up recent productions of note from European houses, and presenting them free (and on-demand). Each video broadcast comes with an option for English subtitles and typically remains available for a six-month period.One highlight of the current slate is a Teatro Regio Torino staging of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s “Violanta” — a rarity that mixes late-Romantic lushness of texture with an early-20th-century appreciation for narrative tautness. Inside 90 minutes, a Venetian noblewoman schemes to avenge her sister’s suicide by seducing the dead sibling’s Don Juan. (Complications ensue.)Korngold was still a teenager when the opera premiered, in 1917. His midcentury career in Hollywood — which paved the way for John Williams’s scores — was still decades away. Yet this one-act opera has the grown-up, malevolent poise of “Deception,” a 1946 noir that the composer would later score for Warner Brothers. The lyric sound of the soprano Annemarie Kremer is well suited to the title role — and the orchestra likewise revels in the opera’s eroticism. (If the opera leaves you wanting more Korngold, consider a recent Blu ray of “Das Wunder der Heliane.”) Available through Aug. 28 on OperaVision.eu and YouTube.SETH COLTER WALLSKidsSomething to Explain the MomentThe mystery begins with a dead crow. Soon three curious children — the friends Rani and Maria, and Maria’s little brother, Eduardo — discover other deceased birds. They learn that the siblings’ grandmother has been hospitalized with a high fever. More people fall ill. With the aid of adult scientists and their own meticulous investigation, the young heroes finally identify a microbial culprit. Spoiler alert: It’s not the new coronavirus.“Transmissions: Gone Viral,” a graphic novel developed by the New York Hall of Science and available free on its website, was inspired by the West Nile virus. First detected in New York City in 1999, West Nile cannot spread person to person. But like the coronavirus, it originated in animals, and during the current crisis, the museum recommends this fictionalized account as an educational resource.The novel is also terrific (and not alarmist) entertainment. Intended for middle-schoolers, “Transmissions” includes character portraits, a science glossary and the photo blog Maria keeps. When read online, the five chapters are interactive: You click on symbols to see microscope slides, specimens and further information. Written by Karen de Seve and illustrated by Charlie LaGreca, the book features an electronic exercise to map patterns in the viral outbreak. Another game, Gone Viral!, lets you play a pathogen out to infect the world — one competition I didn’t mind losing.LAUREL GRAEBERCOMEDYHave You Heard of Sam Morril?You heard but didn’t see this comedian and native New Yorker tell a bit in the 2019 “Joker” movie. (Playing himself, he performed just before Joaquin Phoenix’s character at a Gotham open mic.) And you won’t get to see Morril headline this weekend at the real-life Gotham Comedy Club since the coronavirus has put a halt to his live gigs. But after hosting his own talk show in 2017 on the MSG Network, “People Talking Sports* (*and other stuff),” and having Amy Schumer present his first Comedy Central hour, “Positive Influence,” in 2018, Morril is back with a new 47-minute performance filmed at the Comedy Cellar’s Village Underground.“I Got This” has attracted more than 1.4 million views since Comedy Central uploaded it on Feb. 10 to its Comedy Central Stand-Up YouTube channel. In it, Morril cracks wise about becoming an accidental hero in the #MeToo era, the many varied reasons he prefers the city to working on the road, and even a joke about his mother worrying about him touching a dead pigeon. Which remains frighteningly solid advice in these times.SEAN L. McCARTHY More

The Cannes Film Festival has been postponed to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The event, one of the world’s most important film festivals, was meant to run May 12-23, but organizers said in a statement on Thursday that could not happen.Due to the health crisis and the development of the French and international situation, the Festival de Cannes will no longer be able to take place on the dates planned, from May 12 to 23. More info #Cannes2020 👉 https://t.co/peLmfw0gQW pic.twitter.com/SVWPasvU23— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) March 19, 2020
“Several options are considered in order to preserve its running, the main one being a simple postponement,” the organizers’ statement said. That could be a shift to late June or the beginning of July, it added.Spike Lee had been chosen to lead the festival’s jury this year, and would have been the first black person to do so in the festival’s 73-year history.Rumors had been circulating that the festival would be canceled or postponed since March 8, when France brought in restrictions on mass gatherings, limiting them to 1,000 people, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. That is a lower capacity than the festival’s largest venue. On Saturday, Le Point, a French newsmagazine, published an article in which an anonymous member of the festival’s board was quoted saying that this year’s film festival would not take place. But later that day, the organizers denied any decision had been made.“Despite some sensational headlines, there is nothing new to say,” Aïda Belloulid, the festival’s spokeswoman, said in a text message at the time.She said a decision would be made in mid-April when the festival’s program was to be announced, but the situation in France has escalated. The country is now on lockdown, and people can be fined for leaving their homes for reasons other than buying food, traveling to work or exercising. More than 4,000 people were fined on Wednesday, according to France24, the state-owned international news service.Cannes’ statement came after several other major cultural events in Europe made similar reckonings with the pandemic in recent days. On Wednesday, the Eurovision Song Contest was canceled, as was Glastonbury, the British music festival, which was meant to celebrate its 50th year.On Thursday, the Oberammergau Passion Play, a once-in-a-decade re-enactment of the life of Jesus, was also postponed to 2022.But Cannes lack of action so far had made it an outlier in the movie industry, with theaters shuttered across Europe and North America, movie release dates — including the next James Bond film — being pushed back, and sets closed, forcing many in the industry to fear for their future.Movie theater owners in the United States have already asked for government help and promised to try and support former staff out of work because of the crisis.Cannes’s organizers said in their statement that they will make a decision about what to do next.“In the meantime, the Festival de Cannes lends its vocal support to all of those who firmly call on everyone to respect the general lockdown, and ask to show solidarity in these difficult times for the entire world,” it said.The statement ends with, “See you very soon.” More

Like many of you, we miss going to the movies, and we also miss having new movies to think, write and argue about. But there is still a lot to say about a lot of the older movies out there, including some that not all of us have seen. Your Weekend Watch is a chance for us to crowd into the (virtual) theater together and then meet up afterward to enthuse, complain and (politely or not) talk about what we just saw. In the coming weeks, we will be looking at classics and curiosities, misunderstood masterpieces and movies we somehow missed.First up: “Top Gun.”[embedded content]Misunderstood masterpiece or jingoistic dreck? In spite of the fact that he shares the director’s name, A.O. Scott (you can call him Tony) has never seen it, which appalls Manohla Dargis (you can call her Mistress Manohla). Released in 1986 and starring Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer and some other guy, the movie is a prime specimen of its era’s high-concept entertainment, full of movie-star bravado and flyboy bluster.Reviewing it in The New York Times, Walter Goodman declared that “‘Top Gun’ fires off as spectacular a show of state-of-the-art jet battle as the movies have given us.” It also put Tom Cruise’s career into orbit, spawning indelible pop-culture catchphrases.Do we still feel the need, the need … for speed? How does the movie’s military machismo hold up after all these years? Does its vision of a peacetime fighting force instructed to “act as though we’re at war” resonate in an era of forever wars and our epidemiological equivalent of war? The sequel scheduled for release this summer may or may not have answered those questions, but in the meantime let’s turn and burn, baby.The movie is available on several platforms (here’s a guide). After watching it, tell us what you think in the comments section below and be sure to do so by 6 p.m. Eastern time on Monday. We’ll return with our reactions to your comments on Tuesday. More

At midnight on Sunday, Los Angeles shut down its movie theaters. On Tuesday, New York did the same. These closures were part of an urgent and necessary effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus and are the right thing to do, no question. Even so, the news filled me with a sense of loss. So much of my life has been defined by — and literally organized around — watching films in theaters. Moviegoing is who I am.For those who came of age with home video it can be hard to grasp why anyone still bothers to go out to see movies. This bafflement has become part of a steady drumbeat of complaints about watching movies in theaters: the pricey tickets, bad projection, overpriced junk food, the creeps, potential maniacs and selfish people texting or talking on their phones. Just stay home, kick back and binge on another suboptimal Netflix show. But moviegoing helped make me who I am, shaped my world and my sense of self, beginning in childhood.It started with my film-crazed parents, young East Village bohemians who couldn’t afford babysitters and so brought me everywhere, including to the movies. This was in New York in the mid-1960s, a heroic age of cinephilia before home video. When I was 3, they took me to see Vincente Minnelli’s “Lust for Life,” a glorious, overheated drama with Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh. I cried so loudly when van Gogh cut off his ear that afterward, my mom says, some of the other patrons smiled, as if to reassure me everything would be OK. I like to think that this was the start of my life in film.By the time I was 8, my favorite movies were Jean Cocteau’s “Orpheus” and François Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim,” which sounds ridiculous but is true. As I got older, I started going to theaters by myself. I went to everything, often without knowing anything about what I was seeing. I’d ask for a buck or two and trot over to St. Marks Cinema, a second-run theater on Second Avenue, or Theater 80, a revival house. The prints at Theater 80 were criminally battered and the rear projection appalling, but it had jaw-dropping concessions and a sustained commitment to Astaire and Rogers musicals.So many of my memories are connected with moviegoing; some are of being alone in a theater full of people, which is a metaphor for my life, though also a metaphor for being alive. I love laughing and crying and shrieking with an enthusiastic audience. And while I now go to the movies for work, I also go to the movies for pleasure and for the love of the art. I go because I’m curious, because I like the director or star. I go because I’m happy, anxious or depressed. I go because films have provided comfort throughout my life, offering me an escape from my own reality but also a way of making sense of it, giving me glossy and gritty worlds to discover and reassuringly disappear in.When I write about movies, I tend to frame them in aesthetic and cultural terms. What I don’t write about are the people I saw them with and whose presence — their bodies next to mine — can become inextricably bound up with how I think about certain films. I love “The Road Warrior” for many reasons, but part of what makes it still feel meaningful is the group of friends, now scattered, I saw it with in the front row of St. Marks Cinema. Whenever I rewatch “The Silence of the Lambs,” I think about my close friend Amy and how we clung to each other when we first saw it. I can’t think of “The New World” without flashing on sitting in my car with my husband afterward and sobbing, overcome by the emotions the movie had unleashed about it, life, him.Cinephilia has profoundly changed since home video took off in the 1980s. Before, you had to leave the house and tailor your viewing desires to the theater’s schedule, not yours. To see a film required planning, determination. You had to juggle calendars and scour newspaper listings that you invariably taped to the fridge. The more interesting theaters had their own programming sensibility and calendars that often included capsule reviews. As a kid, I also pored over TV listings, and my favorite critical take of all time remains a one-sentence tour de force that frequently ran in The New York Times: “This dog has fleas.” (How could I not become a film critic?)There are more ways now to watch films than ever, but I still vastly prefer seeing them on the big screen, even if it means navigating rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles, where I now live. I am committed to the rituals of moviegoing: scrutinizing the new posters, cruising past the concessions, checking out the crowd (and exits), landing the perfect seat and savoring the delicious moment when the room darkens right before the screen lights up. In that instant, I always hope for the best and on occasion actually see it. Because even though I love moviegoing, I don’t love every movie.But I always love thinking about films and puzzling through both how they work and how they work on us. It’s easy to understand why a drama about a dying parent can knock us sideways (or cause us to sneer at its cheap tricks). That little old lady onscreen may be your personal Proustian madeleine, tapping memories of your own mother. And if you drive a bit faster after seeing the latest “Fast & Furious” blowout (yes, I’ve done that) it may have to do with what the Italian neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese calls “mirror neurons,” the neural mechanism that fires in our brains when we perform an action and when we watch someone else perform one. The idea being that when Vin Diesel revs his engine, our brains react as if we’re gunning ours too.Gallese asserts that we live in a “we-centric space,” which is a perfect metaphor for movie theaters and moviegoing. However films do their work — create their magic — they do so because of other people: making movies is a social act and so is moviegoing. And while you can watch them sitting alone on your couch (I regularly do although usually with a few cats), there is something qualitatively different about going to a designated space and sitting, and staying, in the enveloping dark with a lot of people you don’t know and maybe some you do. It is an exquisite, human thing to sit with all those other souls, to be alone with others.With social distancing, quarantines and self-isolation, many of us are now physically alone. I am fervently hoping for the best for us all. When we at last can go out again and be with one another, I hope that we flood cinemas, watching every single movie, from the most rarefied art film to the silliest Hollywood offering. The movies can be exasperating and worse, but they have seen us through a lot, including economic bad times and wars. And there is nothing like watching a movie, leaving the world while being rooted in it alongside friends, family and everyone else. I miss that, I miss you. More

It looks like spring break 2020 will be remembered more for the break than the spring.From Florida to Mexico, spring break festivities — pool parties, beach parties, hotel parties, party parties — have been canceled in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. To stem the spread of the virus, many locales have closed beaches, enacted curfews and limited access to bars and restaurants, effectively canceling spring break. (But not everyone is listening.)Of course nothing can replace the feeling of a clingy T-shirt soaked in cheap beer. There’s no bigger thrill than the crisp clap of a massive belly flop made by an actual massive belly. To counter spring break withdrawal, here are five movies that will bring sun and fun (and beefcake and cheesecake) to your screen in these dark times.[embedded content]Where the Boys Are (1960)Available on Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, iTunesEver wondered where spring break as a thing came from? Start with this classic CinemaScope romp about four coeds (Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss and Yvette Mimieux) who spend their spring vacation under the Fort Lauderdale sun strategically flirting up a storm with young men on the make (including George Hamilton, Jim Hutton, Frank Gorshin and Rory Harrity). Directed by Henry Levin, the film features frivolities like dancing and making out, but also jazz and, surprisingly, a pensive ending. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther was gentlemanly — and timeless — in his description of spring break: “Here are all these youngsters jammed together, on the beach, in beer joints and motels — coeds from state universities, fellows from the Ivy League — flirting and making passes, with only one thing on their minds. That is xes spelled backwards.” Francis, a popular singer at the time, scored a chart-topping hit with her version of the title theme song.Spring Break (1983)Available on Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes“It’s the reason kids go to college in the first place.” That’s how the trailer sets up the rowdy shenanigans in this quintessential spring break film, about two friends (David Knell and Perry Lang) who visit Fort Lauderdale for a spring break bacchanal. With only debauchery on the brain, the film checks every spring break box: barely-there bikinis, a wet T-shirt contest, sex aplenty. The movie is also a time machine back to the randy Golden Age of early ’80s teen sex comedies like “Porky’s” and “The Last American Virgin” that made pearl-clutchers clutch even harder. And talk about pivots: “Spring Break” was directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who in 1980 led lustful teens down a less pleasurable path as the director of the original “Friday the 13th.”Nightmare Beach (1989)Available on KanopyThe horror genre loves to upend a beloved tradition — Christmas, birthday parties, birth itself — into an opportunity for mayhem and massacre. Spring break is the target in this under-the-radar oddity that marries the slasher film and the beach party flick, two genres that share a love of “naked girls and stupidity,” as one critic put it. The director, Harry Kirkpatrick (possibly a pseudonym for the Italian director Umberto Lenzi), uses pool parties, sweaty machismo and topless young women to set the mood. The outlandish script has something to do with an angry biker gang, fratty spring breakers and a leather-clad killer who rides a motorcycle that doubles as an electric chair. Fans of bargain-bin ’80s horror will find plenty to enjoy: a hair metal soundtrack, girls with feathered bangs, guys in mesh tank tops, studded headbands and a busybody preacher. For a spring break horror movie double feature, add “Piranha 3D” (2010), a gory dark comedy about flesh-eating fish who ruin everything.Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! (2008)Available on Amazon, iTunes More

Straddling the line between advocacy documentary and D.I.Y. infomercial, “Dosed” promotes psychoactive vegetation as a potential cure for drug addiction. The filmmaker, Tyler Chandler, trails a friend, known in the film only by a first name, Adrianne, as she experiments with psilocybin mushrooms and the hallucinogenic plant iboga to treat her seemingly intractable dependence on heroin, methadone or morphine. The effectiveness of these alternative-medicine therapies, and the question of whether they should be legal, is still the subject of debate.Adrianne, who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, has a third, potentially powerful ingredient contributing to her recovery: the presence of the camera, which, at times, is clearly on her mind. As the documentary opens, Adrianne is asked how she would like it to end. “I’d love to be sober,” she replies, but adds that she’d like to be sober, generally. And although her treatment does not follow a straightforward path — her initial efforts at a supervised iboga retreat are disrupted by a hospital trip for a panic attack — she eventually achieves the sobriety she foreshadows.[embedded content]Which is great. But the shot-calling undermines the movie’s pro-psychedelics argument, because there is no way to control for the psychosomatic effects of starring in a documentary. Nor does “Dosed” do much to counter or even address objections to mushrooms or iboga as treatments, although it does include firm warnings about the need for supervision.The movie, which was scheduled to be released in New York on Friday, will instead be available to rent or buy on Vimeo. The distributor has pledged a portion of the proceeds to fighting the coronavirus pandemic.DosedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. More

Enid Devlin (a snake-eyed Margo Martindale, who wields a cane with finesse) runs a bed, breakfast & beyond, complete with a candy dish of condoms in the foyer and a retinue of young women on duty in the tiny Maine town where “Blow the Man Down” is set.With a gracious exterior that’s only sparingly applied, she fails to hide her true nature for long. She’s too busy for the funeral of her old friend Mary Margaret Connolly, but the rest of the gang, Irish Catholic women who grew up and raised families in Easter Cove, enfold the dead woman’s daughters, Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) and Priscilla (Sophie Lowe).In this Amazon feature, streaming on Prime Video, the daughters are bitterly divided. Mary Beth, outwardly more spirited, can’t wait to break free from the town. Priscilla wants to stay and make a go of the family seafood market, although her mother’s only legacy is debt.In the few days the film covers, three people will end up murdered, and a stunned Mary Beth and Priscilla will wrestle with a messy obstacle, until a greater force takes charge.Women are the only ones who really have any agency in the movie, which was written and directed by the filmmaking team of Danielle Krudy and Bridget Savage Cole.Men rarely come up; those who do are one-dimensional (there are a couple of police, a bad guy and a sea shanty chorus). The older women, on the other hand, Annette O’Toole among them, are almost uncannily attuned to one another, and once they decide to act, they slide effortlessly into their roles, as they always have, pulling the town’s strings.While the sisterhood in Easter Cove is indeed powerful, the secrets that bind its members prove to be fairly simple, and the result is intriguing enough to make you wonder what these writer-directors might accomplish if they applied their vision to a more expansive canvas.Blow the Man DownRated R. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

What are we supposed to do with a movie like “Human Capital”? It opens with a banquet-hall waiter, somewhere in Westchester, being run off the road and into a coma, then spends the rest of its 97 minutes with the folks who maybe did it. The movie is not concerned about the waiter, or the family he was on his way home to. The other characters don’t care either.I could forgive the indifference, if we’d been plunked down for some hearty character exploration or a juicy moral essay. But maybe I’m asking too much of a movie that couldn’t bother to call itself anything more than “Human Capital.”The loose sources are an American novel (by Stephen Amidon) and a much better Italian movie by the same name, from 2013. But the Italian movie, which Paolo Virzì directed, had a marrow-deep instinct for class. There were higher costs. The people in it were stranger, with sharper angles; they were alive. This new movie, which Oren Moverman wrote, Marc Meyers directed and has parts for Liev Schreiber and Marisa Tomei, is a character study that hasn’t done its homework.After the car hits the waiter, played in a blink by a charismatic Dominic Colón, the story jumps somewhere else. A real estate broker named Drew Hagel (Schreiber) drives his teenage daughter, Shannon (Maya Hawke), to hang out with her boyfriend, Jamie (Fred Hechinger), at his family’s grand concrete, stone and steel manse. Rather than drive back home, Drew mopes around the property. I knew I was in for a rough hour and a half when Jamie’s dad, Quint (Peter Sarsgaard), gets a load of Drew and, rather than say “I love ‘Ray Donovan!’” or “Which defensive line were you on?” invites him to help win a tennis match.Drew is so taken with Quint and the hedge fund he runs that he takes out a $300,000 bridge loan to invest in it. His application is riddled with financial hyperbole. But he needs in — so desperately, in fact, that he dismisses a call from Shannon saying, “It’s just my daughter.”Schreiber is playing this part as though there were a depth to Drew. He gives him a strong working man’s New York accent. But the movie doesn’t give him anything to act. Not anything compelling. When Drew’s wife, Ronnie (Betty Gabriel, pitifully underused), tells him she is expecting, he looks unmoved. We’re supposed to wonder: Is he thinking about Quint’s firm? The risk in performing preoccupation is you can wind up looking bored. Anyway, it’s obvious the minute you hear Sarsgaard hiss his first line that Drew’s 300K has nowhere to go but south.Just when I thought I couldn’t take much more of Drew’s desperate choices, Moverman switches perspectives, to Tomei, who’s playing Jamie’s mother, Carrie — hair, shades, fur, a touch of snoot. We watch her have a day — she visits her mentally absent mother, buys some clothes and, for kicks, a decrepit old movie palace. (“Kids have never seen ‘Singing in the Rain’!”)This is the film’s most successful stretch. Maybe because it doesn’t take a great imagination to conjure up “life of an unhappy rich lady.” Books and soaps have got centuries of those. Give her somebody sexy to flirt with, give her a crushing blow, let Marisa Tomei do the acting. I don’t know that she’s having a great time here, but she certainly seems invested and connected to whoever she’s sharing a scene with.She’s not enough, though. Eventually, the script moves on to a third P.O.V. that’s supposed to deepen the first two. All there is to say about that is that it involves Alex Wolff, who played the tortured son in “Hereditary” and knows how to wring drama from even a diet-tragedy. He’s just about the only person here who can. Wolff is spared the rest of cast’s groaners like: “All this anxiety is palpable” and “human misery is a profit indicator” and “when did elite become such a dirty word?” None of that, by the way, has anything to do with the waiter. Remember him?The movie might argue that making him negligible is the entire point. But the filmmakers don’t seem interested in a true class crisis. This is a yarn. And the longer it spends ignoring him, flirting with his accident, the better off I’m convinced he is.Human CapitalNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More