Movies

Night is practically eternal in “Vitalina Varela,” the new picture from the Portuguese master Pedro Costa. In this vision, the barrios of Fontainhas, in Lisbon, where much of Costa’s work has been set and shot, seem to have mostly migrated underground. (In reality, the barrios have been so transformed over the years that they no longer exist as such.) The movie’s opening shot is exemplary: a beautifully framed (in the almost square Academy ratio) view of an alleyway, the curve of the gray wall on its left creating a visually attractive angle. At the top of the frame, black; it’s a submerged alley, and at the top right you can see some crosses planted in the ground above. Some men come through the space; it’s a funeral procession.In a little while, we see an airport tarmac, again at night. It is always startling to see things like planes in a Costa picture. A group of workers, rolling buckets and holding mops and brooms, approach one plane. There’s a close-up of the stairs at the plane’s exit: a pair of bare feet, battered and almost bloated by years of labor and who knows what else. As they move down the stairs, large drops of water splotch them. We don’t know if this is rain, or tears. The workers greet the disembarking passenger: “Vitalina, you arrived too late. Your husband was buried days ago. There is nothing in Portugal for you.”[embedded content]This is the title character, played by a woman who bears the same name — as stylized as Costa’s films now are, they never break free of the reality that grounds his ethos. In the subsequent scenes, in exchanges with mourning neighbors and a man of the cloth played by Ventura, a long time Costa performer, Vitalina plumbs the depths of the aforementioned nothing.In monologues mostly delivered in the meager quarters that Vitalina settles in, she recalls the past she and her husband shared in Cape Verde, the island many Fontainhas residents have a strong connection to. Together, they built a house. But the challenges of poverty pulled them apart. This movie has a distant affinity to the classic “Make Way For Tomorrow,” and with the more recent mortality play “The Irishman.”“You turned your face to death. You could have stayed in Cape Verde,” Vitalina cries to her dead husband. “We didn’t have much, but it was ours.”While Costa’s earlier work traded in a demanding, stylized, austere (some would call it punishingly so) realism, in recent years his view has taken on a stunning pictorialism. In the opening shots of this film, one thinks of Goya and Velasquez; the clouds in the night sky evoke El Greco.It is not inaccurate to call Costa an acquired taste. In the case of this reviewer, it was a road to Damascus experience with the 2007 film “Colossal Youth,” which required a second viewing to yield its epiphany, Like that picture, “Vitalina Varela” is socially conscious, but dreamlike, elegiac. And an inquiry, too, into the abilities and deficiencies of film as a medium to illuminate human consciousness and experience. It’s essential cinema.Vitalina VarelaNot rated. In Cape Verdean Creole and Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. More

Your first instinct while watching “Emma” may be to lick the screen (or perhaps blanch). This latest adaptation of Jane Austen has been candied up with the sort of palette you see in certain old-fashioned confectionaries and in fussy Georgian-era restorations. With a rosy blush in her cheeks, her satiny ribbons and bows, Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy) herself looks as lovingly adorned and tempting as a Christmas delectable, though whether she bears any relation to Austen’s Emma is another matter.Each generation gets the “Emma” it presumably wants or deserves. In the mid-1990s, there were several, most notably “Clueless,” Amy Heckerling’s 1995 contemporary take with a, like, totally cute miniskirted Alicia Silverstone, and Douglas McGrath’s squarer, rather more well-behaved “Emma” starring Gwyneth Paltrow. A half-dozen or so Austen adaptations, both for film and for television, were released in the mid-1990s, causing McGrath to note that “first there is no Jane Austen and then it’s raining Jane Austen.” The downpour has continued since, though sometimes eased into a drizzle.The new “Emma,” directed by Autumn de Wilde, making a confident feature debut, is set in an early 19th century that has been shrewdly retrofitted for modern-age sensibilities. (The novel was published in 1815.) All the familiar elements are here: the rolling hills and empire waistlines, the elegant manors and manners, the silent and attentive servants. Yet everything — the pea greens and dusky pinks, the comic looks and misunderstandings — has been emphatically embellished, so much so that it initially seems that de Wilde has adapted the material using Wes Anderson software.[embedded content]This approach takes getting used to and your mileage may vary; much depends on your tolerance for archness, twee and lightly deployed Anderson-ish tics. Certainly the opening scenes are less than promising, what with their fussy symmetry, popping colors and absence of shadows as well as flashes of unappealing, poorly processed visuals. Yet when Emma begins swanning around some blooms while imperiously instructing a maid about which flower to cut, the scene economically summons up a world and an attitude of careless, unconscious privilege. Taylor-Joy affects an appropriate hauteur, though one that, alas, too often solidifies into masklike blankness.This is a somewhat harsh, unappealing introduction to the character, whom Austen describes as “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition.” At 21, Emma lives with her father (Bill Nighy, reliably amusing) in a large country estate 16 miles from London. As in the novel, the movie opens just as her longtime companion, Miss Taylor (the invaluable Gemma Whelan), marries, leaving Emma alone and prey to her worst, most meddlesome habits, particularly when it comes to other people. She’s blissfully unaware of her failings, accustomed to having her way with, Austen writes, “a disposition to think a little too well of herself.”Written by the novelist Eleanor Catton (“The Luminaries”), this “Emma” follows Austen’s story in its sweep and to that end involves its heroine’s dogged, often humorously ill-conceived efforts to make a match for her poor friend, Harriet (the affecting Mia Goth). Harriet lives in a school whose red-coated denizens can be seen trudging around as meticulously arranged as the girls in the children’s book “Madeline” (or the titular servants in “The Handmaid’s Tale”). In Harriet, Emma sees a self-flattering project, someone whose life she can improve with better society and the right suitor. In this material, de Wilde clearly sees an opportunity for heightened expressionism.The story’s comedy — and its narrative boldness — comes from the often absurd, yawning chasm between what Emma thinks she knows (and she believes she knows all) and what she so profoundly doesn’t understand, including the hearts of the people in her orbit. These include a dull clergyman (Josh O’Connor) and an enigmatic interloper (Callum Turner), both of whom Emma tries to steer toward Harriet. And then there’s the dashing heartthrob, Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn, very good), a wealthy friend of the family who, soon after galloping into the story, has stripped down naked in his bedroom, an entrance that immediately tips the role he plays in this game.As Emma’s plans stutter forward and amusingly slip off course, the filmmakers’ mild interventions feel less forced, more organic; even a seductive dance and an importunate nosebleed end up working nicely. Austen’s story and words, it turns out, prove unsurprisingly durable and impervious to decorative tweaking. And so, after a while, the Anderson-ish tics become less noticeable, and both the emotions and overall movie more persuasive. Much of this has to do with the pleasure of watching people fall on their faces — and in love — and with the suppleness of the largely note-perfect cast. Together, they deepen the feelings that swirl around a woman who with a sharp tongue and a vast imagination invents her world amusingly, foolishly, enduringly.EmmaRated PG for discreet nudity. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. More

Over the next four weekends children will help save endangered species, prevent a jetliner from crashing, rescue girls from forced marriages and even marshal a revolt against a sitting president (but not the one in the White House).All these deeds will take place onscreen as the New York International Children’s Film Festival brings works from more than 30 countries — including a new program of Spanish-language short films — to theaters in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. But even though some of the cinematic actions are fictional, the 18 feature presentations and 93 shorts add up to an overwhelming celebration of young people taking charge.“We are always looking for films that show kids who are empowered to make change,” said Nina Guralnick, executive director of the 23-year-old festival. But along with the recent global rise in youthful activism, she added, “we were seeing movies that reflected that trend.”One of the most striking is the French documentary “Forward: Tomorrow Belongs to Us,” which has its first of three festival screenings on Saturday. Its director, Gilles de Maistre, profiles seven young activists, including Aissatou, 12, who in the course of the film (and with police assistance) actually interrupts a marriage procession in Guinea to inform the 14-year-old bride-to-be of her rights. The movie also includes Hunter, 11, who helps rehabilitate rhinos in South Africa, and José Adolfo, who at 13 won the 2018 Children’s Climate Prize for a bank he founded in Peru: Young people establish accounts by being paid for the recyclables they collect. (He will lead a post-screening Q. and A.)Young moviegoers can find fictional characters who are just as forward-thinking in titles like “Fritzi: A Revolutionary Tale” and “Rocca Changes the World.” The animated “Fritzi,” from the German filmmakers Ralf Kukula and Matthias Bruhn, follows an East German 12-year-old girl who is caught up in the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Rocca” concerns the breaking of different kinds of barriers as it focuses on an intrepid 11-year-old whose father is an astronaut. Directed by Katja Benrath, who will visit the festival on March 7 for a Q. and A., this German feature begins as the aeronautically savvy Rocca (Luna Marie Maxeiner) calmly lands a plane whose crew has food poisoning, and then skateboards away. But that is not the end of her resourcefulness. She also combats bullying and homelessness.“It’s like a modern Pippi Longstocking story,” Benrath said in a telephone conversation from Hamburg. She noted that the film’s message was simple: “It’s easy to change the world. Everybody can. Just start with themselves.”The annual festival, which begins on Friday night with “Children of the Sea,” the Japanese director Ayumu Watanabe’s manga-inspired animated feature about three adolescents with a mystical connection to ocean life, has always been a pioneer, too. It consistently offers titles for teenagers as well as for younger audiences. It is also one of the few children’s film festivals that is Oscar-qualifying: The shorts that win prizes from its adult jury can compete for Academy Awards. (That jury’s longstanding members include the filmmakers Sofia Coppola and Taika Waititi, who just won a screenwriting Oscar for “JoJo Rabbit.”)And while diversity still seems to be a challenge for Hollywood, this festival cultivates it. In 2020, women directed 53 percent of its shorts. This is also the first time the events will include an industry forum, Towards an Inclusive Future, at which gender and ethnic representation in children’s media will be discussed.“We’re really trying to complete a circle, and go from our audiences and what they need and what they’ve been asking for, to our filmmakers and what they need,” said Maria-Christina Villaseñor, the festival’s programming director.Some of those filmmakers have created works that might initially seem disturbing for young audiences. But the festival does not shy away from subjects like death and divorce.“If you’re not shaken up a little, you shouldn’t be doing it,” Villaseñor said about her role as programmer. “That’s what art should do, and it doesn’t matter how old you are.”One film she at first found unsettling — starting with its title — was “The Club of Ugly Children,” a Dutch feature adapted from Koos Meinderts’s 1987 book. Set in a rigidly ordered dystopia whose motto is “Keep It Clean,” the movie concerns an autocratic president who decides to intern all children he finds unattractive. After a boy escapes, a youth-led underground rebellion starts.The film is “like a celebration of diversity,” said Jonathan Elbers, the director, speaking by phone from Amsterdam. “There is not a stand on what is pretty or what is not. The kids are just kids.” That approach, said Elbers, who will take part in a festival Q. and A. on March 7, puts the focus on “Who are you to decide I don’t belong in this society?”The festival also addresses revolutions that are less political than personal. The shorts programs “Girls’ POV” and “Boys Beyond Boundaries” explore and expand gender roles. Géraldine Charpentier’s “Self Story,” an animated Belgian short, is screening in both programs because its subject, Lou, is nonbinary. An American film in the “Boys” slate, “Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad,” by Camrus Johnson and Pedro Piccinini, delves deeply into grief. Johnson conceived the film after the unexpected death of his father’s best friend. Memorializing the older men’s bond, it urges male viewers not to leave love unspoken.“Express what you feel,” Johnson said, “because sometimes you can make someone’s day — or someone’s life.”The festival, however, is not all weighty themes. Aardman Animations’ latest Shaun the Sheep comedy, “Farmageddon,” and “NYCIFF Rocks,” a new all-ages shorts program that celebrates music, are among the lighter fare. Teenage rockers can also expect humor — and plenty of beats — in Kenji Iwaisawa’s “On-Gaku: Our Sound,” about Japanese high school musicians, and Simon Bird’s “Days of the Bagnold Summer,” a British movie with Earl Cave (son of Nick) and an original score by the indie band Belle and Sebastian. Villaseñor expects that title to continue a festival tradition of engaging grown-ups as much as their offspring.“I’ve had conversations with people who have adult children now, and they talk wistfully about the festival,” she said. “And they tell me, almost as a little secret, that they want to come back this year.”The New York International Children’s Film FestivalThrough March 15 at various locations; 212-349-0330, nyicff.org. More

Gaptoothed and gorgeous, the title character of “Goldie” (played by the fashion model Slick Woods) wears a carpet of tangerine fuzz on her head and avocado sneakers on her ever-moving feet. Barely 18, Goldie doesn’t have much, but she does have dreams, chief among them to dance in an upcoming hip-hop video. A canary-yellow faux-fur coat she spies in a store window would be perfect for that performance, and — not incidentally — for the woman she fiercely wants to become. Whatever the cost, she’s gotta have it.Colorful as a box of Skittles, “Goldie” (written and directed by the Dutch filmmaker Sam de Jong) turns its section of the Bronx into a world of pizza slices and hand-to-mouth cash deals. In part a commentary on how monetizing one’s image has become a viable economic lifeline, the movie constructs an obstacle course of hardships between Goldie and her aspirations. When her mother (Marsha Stephanie Blake) is arrested for unspecified reasons, Goldie, terrified that her two preteen half sisters will be put into care, grabs them up and takes to the streets.But people on the margins rarely have rich friends, and the cash Goldie has swiped from her mother’s shifty, live-in boyfriend (Danny Hoch) won’t go very far. So for the next while, Goldie hustles the girls from one possible savior to another — a former teacher, a variety of sketchy acquaintances — while trying to sell her mother’s pain medication. With every put-down, her can-do energy ramps up; and as the three traverse the city’s streets, bounced along by Nathan Halpern’s encouraging score, de Jong outlines their bodies in neon-bright squiggles of color — protective shields against desperate circumstances.[embedded content]This playfulness keeps the movie determinedly jaunty. (In one wonderful sequence, filmed like a game of Whac-a-Mole, Goldie dodges department-store security guards among crammed racks of clothing.) Yet its freeze frames and other tricks can dilute the drama and make the positivity feel forced. Woods, remarkably comfortable in her first film role, gives Goldie a steel spine and a feisty resourcefulness, her moments of vulnerability rare, but essential. When she glances directly at the camera — so fleetingly I wondered if I had imagined it — she seems to be implicating all of us in a system determined to grind her down.Opening on a note of quirky vitality, “Goldie” fades out on a sigh of bittersweet ambivalence. Will the system win, or is Goldie learning to differentiate between achievable goals and wild fantasy? That citrus coat screams success, fame and the chance of a future for herself and her siblings. That’s a lot of hope to place in one piece of clothing.GoldieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. More

The cinematic universe of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne is at once rigorously consistent and, in spite of its geographical limitations, endlessly expansive. The Dardennes, focusing their attention on working-class, French-speaking parts of Belgium, tell stories of individual ethical crises that unfold against a backdrop of poverty and social disruption. There is no end to such stories, and though they are linked by theme, setting and technique, each one is different — a fable of contemporary life that feels both specific and eternal.Their latest parable, winner of the directing award at Cannes last year, is “Young Ahmed.” Its title character (Idir Ben Addi), present in nearly every shot, is a serious-minded — you might say nerdy — 13-year-old under the sway of a radical imam. This is something of a departure for the filmmakers, less because Ahmed is Muslim than because of the explicitly spiritual nature of his predicament.While religious ideas of mercy, compassion and grace are often implicit in the Dardennes’ films, the immediate problems faced by their protagonists tend to involve work, money and other material concerns, rather than faith as such. The choices they face are often between selfishness and solidarity, between the brute demands of survival and the pull of deeper but less tangible obligations.[embedded content]Ahmed, though, is driven by a different set of imperatives. With his sweet face and soft body, he hardly fits the stereotype of a terrorist, but his piety pulls him away from most of his family and toward violence. He disapproves of the wine his mother drinks and the clothes his sister wears, and refuses to shake hands with his after-school math tutor, a less outwardly devout Muslim named Inès (Myriem Akheddiou).He spends his spare time at prayer and ablutions, at the imam’s modest madrasa, and on his laptop, where he watches videos about jihadist martyrs, including one of his cousins. When the imam, Youssouf (Othmane Moumen), accuses Inès of apostasy — for proposing an Arabic study group that would use secular texts, rather than the Quran — Ahmed takes the condemnation literally, with horrifying results.The roots of Ahmed’s zeal are not explained. The viewer, as usual with the Dardennes, is plunged into his reality and trusted to gather essential information on the fly. Ben Addi is a quiet, inexpressive performer, and his blankness places Ahmed’s inner life firmly off limits. We can speculate that the soft-spoken, uncompromising Youssouf might have stepped into a void left by Ahmed’s absent father, or about how the boy might have found relief from the torments of adolescence in strict religious observance. But to interpret “Young Ahmed” in those ways would be to mistake it for (or fault it for failing to be) a psychological case study.The plot may hinge on Ahmed’s actions and motivations, but the film’s real drama revolves around a central moral and political conflict, between religious extremism and a humanist ethos that is more behavioral than doctrinal. Ahmed’s narrow, austere, immature way of looking at the world is contrasted not with a rival set of beliefs, but with the patience of the people around him and the benevolence of the Belgian state.Inès treats him kindly, and so do the guards and social workers at the juvenile detention center where he is sent after he attacks her with a knife. His social worker (Olivier Bonnaud) and the owners of the farm where he goes on work assignments are friendly and respectful of his religion. The infidel world seems as dedicated to his well-being as he is to its destruction.This benevolence is an expression of the Dardennes’ stubborn humanist faith, and also of their commitment to the battered and resilient ideals of European social democracy. They don’t make excuses for their characters, including Ahmed, and they refuse to give up on anyone. That generosity, coupled with the unpretentious precision of their craft, is always moving, though in this case not entirely convincing.“Young Ahmed” is suspenseful and economical, with a clear sense of what’s at stake, but something crucial — perhaps a deeper insight into the character or the contradictions that ensnare him — is missing. This film feels thinner and more schematic than Dardenne masterpieces like “Rosetta,” “L’Enfant” or “Two Days, One Night,” as if the story had been molded from a set of arguments and assumptions rather than chiseled from the hard stone of reality.Young AhmedNot rated. In French and Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

There have been many Russian movies on the subject of World War II but none more ferocious than Elem Klimov’s “Come and See.” Seldom if ever have wartime atrocities been depicted so vividly — and with such hallucinated fervor.Released in 1985 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Soviet victory, now newly restored and playing at Film Forum from Feb. 21 through March 3, “Come and See” shows Nazi-occupied Byelorussia (now Belarus) through the eyes of an increasingly traumatized 14-year-old boy, Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko).The title comes from the Book of Revelation. The first words spoken are “Hey, are you crazy!” The final sequence, a frenzied assemblage of photographs and newsreel clips in which time speeds up and goes in reverse, defies description.“Come and See” begins with a series of mysterious encounters as Flyora finds a rifle, bids his frantic mother farewell, and sets off to join the partisans in the forest. The light is unearthly. The Steadicam seldom stops moving through a Boschian hellscape, filled with unseen voices and offscreen dangers. At various times, Flyora is deafened by explosions or rendered mute with horror. Before the movie ends, his hair has turned gray and his prematurely wizened face has frozen in a mask of terror.The camera calms down and comes in close for the film’s central atrocity. Music blares, dogs bark as, having taken a town, a squadron of drunken German soldiers rounds up the inhabitants and parades them into a wooden barn to meet a fiery doom. Writing in The New York Times, the reviewer Walter Goodman said that the scene goes on so long that “you are left with a feeling of being worked on.” That’s one way to put it. A postscript mentions that, during their scorched-earth retreat, the Germans torched 628 Byelorussian villages.The script, which had to wait eight years for official approval, was by Klimov and the Byelorussian writer Ales Adamovich, a teenage partisan fighter during World War II. Klimov, six years younger than Adamovich, was 10 when he and his family were evacuated from Stalingrad. “The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky,” he once said, adding with regard to “Come and See” that, “Had I included everything I knew and shown the whole truth, even I could not have watched it.” One wonders how he was able to stage it.More horrifically antiwar than romantically partisan or patriotic in the tradition of Soviet combat films, “Come and See” ends with intimations of nuclear catastrophe, presaging what came to be called the cinema of glasnost. The movie won the grand prize at the 1985 Moscow Film Festival and the next year, Klimov was elected first secretary of the Soviet Film Makers Union. As such he was largely responsible for taking banned movies off the shelf. The most notorious of these was his own, a floridly expressionist account of Czar Nicholas II’s final days, “Agoniya,” released here as “Rasputin.”Although involved with subsequent projects, Klimov, who died in 2003, never made another movie. “Come and See” would be his — some would say “the” — last word.Come and SeeFeb. 21 through March 3 at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; 212-727-8110, filmforum.org.Rewind is an occasional column covering revived, restored and rediscovered movies playing in New York’s repertory theaters. More

As this animated movie’s title suggests, this tale is a celebration of taking on life’s challenges your own way. Or, more specifically, finding the courage to do that. And yes, surfing is the dominant metaphor.A long-limbed, cheerful teenager, Hinako, sets down in a seaside town for the summer, catching waves with expertise. Observing her from a rooftop, a young firefighter, Minato, describes her to a friend as his hero.The two meet cute, more than once, before embarking on a fairy tale anime romance, their affinity defined by a song they love. There is making out, there is talk of finless dolphins, and these creatures hold a key to one of the movie’s mysteries. And there is soon loss, and the process of piecing life back together afterward.[embedded content]The director, Masaaki Yuasa, is adept at stories and visuals where water is a major character. His antic, imaginative feature “Lu Over the Wall” featured a mermaid as a central figure, constantly navigating between sea and sand and sidewalk. Here, one of the couple becomes a water spirit of sorts, manifesting in different settings (a stream, a glass of water, and so on) and imparting wisdom to the earthbound partner.While the movie’s overall gist may be a little too young adult for entirely pleasurable consumption by some, its finale, in which deadly fire appears in an echo of an earlier scene in the movie, and is confronted by supernaturally powered waters, does in fact achieve a form of animation nirvana.Ride Your WaveNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. More

Any documentary on the Band is inevitably going to play like a supplement to “The Last Waltz” (1978), Martin Scorsese’s extraordinary record of the complete group’s final gig — or, as the guitarist-songwriter Robbie Robertson describes it in “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band,” the beginning of a hiatus after which “everybody just forgot to come back.”This new documentary, from the Canadian director Daniel Roher, seems to recognize that it falls heavily within the Scorsese film’s shadow; Roher even uses the performance of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” from “The Last Waltz” for a finale. (Scorsese, who has an executive producer credit, is among the starry interviewees, who also include Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton.)“Once Were Brothers” centers on Robertson, one of the Band’s two surviving original members (along with the keyboardist-saxophonist Garth Hudson), and it is a good primer on the group’s formation, influences and rise. You’ll hear about the musicians’ performances with the rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins; their stint playing backup — and getting booed for it — with Bob Dylan; the atmosphere of freedom at the big pink house where they collaborated near Woodstock, N.Y.; and a dive into drugs and alcohol. That last phase, as relayed here, largely bypassed the family man Robertson. (“I was confused that the guys wanted to play with that fire,” he says of heroin.)[embedded content]You can’t beat the access or the clips, although the absence of Hudson (whom Roher apparently filmed) from the present-day interviews is peculiar. His voice might have provided a valuable counterpoint to Robertson’s recollections.Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the BandRated R. Talk of substance abuse. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More