Movies

A swoon-worthy opening immediately places Bruno de Almeida’s latest film in a world that seems to exist only in cinema: A suave, wavy-haired Michael Imperioli steps out onto an empty, neon-lit street, as an Italian ballad plays in the background. “Cabaret Maxime” (also the name of the nightclub Imperioli’s character, Bennie Gaza, runs) takes place during an indefinable era, in an indefinable place. The setting looks like it could be any number of European cities, though it was shot in Lisbon with all English-speaking actors.[embedded content]The fine grain of the 35mm film beautifully complements the old-school methods of Bennie, who romanticizes the ways of the past and prefers bizarre burlesque numbers (tigers, aging chanteurs and plus-size exotic dancers) that would never show up in slick strip clubs. That kind of establishment moves into the red-light district where Cabaret Maxime resides, and when the competition’s sleazy owners start talking about social media marketing, they pose a threat to Bennie’s way of doing things.Bennie never steps onstage but is given the most difficult act — juggling the mounting pressures. With his cabaret imperiled by gentrification, he tries to keep all his performers happy. Among them are John Ventimiglia, like Imperioli, an alum of “The Sopranos” (Artie the restaurateur) and Ana Padrão, Bennie’s jealous, volatile wife, Stella, who breaks down, scribbling her entire face with lipstick, bringing to mind Diane Ladd in David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart.” A Lynchian enigma lurks about de Almeida’s film, and there is a romantic pulse reminiscent of the work of Jacques Demy. Despite the classic David-versus-Goliath narrative, the story is never as mesmerizing as the grotesquely glam stage numbers and Imperioli’s illuminated face watching them, glowing with pride.Cabaret MaximeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. More

There is nothing objectionable about Michael Bully Herbig’s glossy political thriller, “Balloon,” but there’s nothing particularly exciting about it, either. A true-life tale of how two families narrowly escaped from communist East Germany in 1979 in a homemade hot-air balloon, the movie adopts a path so dramatically familiar we can almost predict each twist and fake-out.[embedded content]Conventionality, though, has its comforts, and “Balloon” glides by on gentle waves of swelling suspense as the Strelzyk and Wetzel families, each with two children, prepare to defect. Red flags pop up on cue: a teenage son with the hots for the daughter of a cartoonishly nosy Stasi neighbor; eagle-eyed storekeepers who note purchases of large amounts of taffeta fabric. An earlier, failed flight by the Strelzyks has left clues to their identities, and the authorities, led by an enigmatic officer named Seidel (Thomas Kretschmann), are closing in. Prepare to hold your breath and pray for a northerly wind.Rushing toward its finale in a frenzy of sewing, “Balloon” (a previous version, “Night Crossing,” was released by Disney in 1982) strains to soar. Scenes depicting the state’s oppressive blanket of surveillance are dismayingly corny, and, because the hunter is more fascinating than his prey, the movie can feel upside-down. Seidel’s intelligence and ideological complexity, emerging more from Kretschmann’s slippery performance than from his character’s dialogue, tease a more compelling narrative slant. In one perfect exchange, he asks a border guard why they shouldn’t simply allow those who hate socialism to leave. His expressions while the underling fails to comprehend the question offer a more succinct representation of thought policing than many bigger and better movies have achieved.BalloonNot rated. In German, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. More

While making his way through the austere Kekexili region of the Tibetan plateau, a rugged truck driver accidentally runs over a sheep. Shortly thereafter, he picks up a dagger-bearing hitchhiker who claims to be on his way to kill his father’s murderer. The soon-to-be-entwined fates of these two men are signaled by a strange if obvious coincidence: They’re both named Jinpa. So begins the new feature from the Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden, a parable-like story about the workings of karma and destiny.[embedded content]The plot is fairly straightforward: After dropping off the hitchhiker, the truck driver (played by an actor also named Jinpa) takes the dead sheep to a monastery to have its soul blessed; he has preoccupied, unsatisfying sex with a lover; and then he searches for his hitchhiking namesake, hoping perhaps to stop him from committing murder. These sequences are padded with droll details and detours. The truck driver, who sports spiky hair, a leather jacket and sunglasses, listens to a Tibetan version of “O Sole Mio” on repeat. Later, in a modest highlight, he indulges in an extended flirtation with a bartender (Sonam Wangmo) whose every word and gesture drips with innuendo.As amusing as these interludes are, they read as attempts to force an exaggerated sense of mystery into an ultimately simple and moralistic tale about the futility of vengeance. The cinematography by Lu Songye compounds this pointless affectation. Shooting from oblique angles in a boxy 4:3 aspect ratio, he deploys light, shadow and careful calibrations of focus to atmospheric effect, but these stylistic flourishes don’t communicate much beyond a generic art-house sensibility.JinpaNot rated. In Tibetan, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. More

“Premature” isn’t original, but it feels that way. A tender, naturalistic romance set in Harlem, this sophomore feature from Rashaad Ernesto Green takes a slight story and packs it with attitude and feeling. Every moment rings true, the vividly textured locations and knockabout relationships more visited than created.Unwaveringly focused on Ayanna (a captivating Zora Howard), 17, during the summer before she leaves for college, the movie deftly alternates between two distinct tones. One is sassy and jocular, as Ayanna, a coolly confident would-be writer, hangs out with her boisterous group of girlfriends. The other is slow and sexy, a cocoon of infatuation that envelops her when she meets the sweetly chivalrous Isaiah (Joshua Boone). A fledgling music producer, Isaiah is a little older, but — as we shall soon learn — not much wiser.[embedded content]Lifted above its narrative clichés by the poetry of the writing and the vibrancy of the filmmaking, “Premature” is tastefully explicit, the lovers’ intimacy filmed (by Laura Valladao) with an old-fashioned dreaminess that’s effortlessly erotic. The dialogue has swagger and swing, and the performances are close to flawless. Michelle Wilson, as Ayanna’s stoic single mother, has too few opportunities to flex; but her look of hopeless resignation when she learns that her daughter might have blown her future is quietly devastating.Issues of race — like the unexpected appearance of Isaiah’s white ex-girlfriend — rear up and recede, woven easily into the fabric of a movie that’s unafraid of ambiguity. As its title indicates, neither Ayanna nor Isaiah is yet mature; she’s just a bit further along that road than he is.PrematureNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

“The Call of the Wild,” Jack London’s gripping 1903 novel, tells the story of a California house dog who discovers his inner wolf. The latest movie adaptation, directed by Chris Sanders, is, strictly speaking, the saga of a human performer who channels his inner pooch.Buck, the heroic St. Bernard-Scotch shepherd mix of the book, is now a computer-generated creation. Terry Notary, the movement coach who taught actors how to mimic simians on the recent “Planet of the Apes” films, played the dog on the set before animation, in what the film bills as a “live action reference performance.” On the evidence, he was quite credible; any cries of “good boy!” that ring out from viewers will only seem creepy in retrospect.[embedded content]Opposite Buck is Harrison Ford, countering the dog’s unnervingly expressive eyes with a disturbingly emotionless voice-over. Ford plays Buck’s eventual master, John Thornton, here a grieving father who has traveled to the Yukon for escape. (Buck buries his bottle of booze.) Pondering this interspecies communion — between a craggy star and a digital dog (based on a man playing a dog) — may prompt howls into an existential void. But as the basis for a family crowd-pleaser, the pairing is often irresistible.The brutality of London’s tale has been softened, as have some of the creakier cultural attitudes. The courier François, described by London as “swarthy” and a “half-breed,” is now Françoise (Cara Gee), and the climactic attack by Native Americans never happens.Still, this “Call of the Wild,” however defanged and updated, doesn’t lack for exciting canine brawls or tense rescues from frozen waters. It also doesn’t lack for an almost soothing corniness, as when the postal worker played by Omar Sy explains, “We don’t just carry the mail. We carry lives.”The Call of the WildRated PG. Animal cruelty. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

Esther Scott, an actress who specialized in playing matriarchal roles in films and television shows — most notably in “Boyz N the Hood” and “Dreamgirls” — died on Friday at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles. She was 66.Ms. Scott had a heart attack and was found unconscious in her Santa Monica, Calif., home on Feb. 11, said her sister Shaun Scott, who confirmed her death.Esther Scott made a career of being the familiar face of nurturing but sometimes strict characters in over 70 movies and many TV shows.In “Boyz N the Hood,” the 1991 movie about the challenges young black men faced growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Ms. Scott played the grandmother of the protagonist’s love interest. She chases the young man out of her granddaughter’s bedroom while wielding a meat cleaver.In 2006’s “Dreamgirls,” Ms. Scott portrayed Curtis Taylor Jr.’s aunt Ethel. Mr. Taylor is a record executive played by Jamie Foxx, and his aunt watches over his children.Ms. Scott played an asylum nurse in “The Craft” (1996) and a judge in “Austin Powers: Goldmember” (2002). She also had roles in “Martin,” “Sister, Sister” and “The Wayans Bros.,” among other TV shows.Fans usually recognized her on the street but did not remember her name, her sister said.Shaun Scott remembers seeing her sister most excited for her role as Bridget Turner in “The Birth of a Nation,” the 2016 movie about Nat Turner, a slave who led a rebellion in Virginia in 1831.Ms. Scott played Mr. Turner’s paternal grandmother, who taught him how to read and write.“She was really looking forward to that particular role,” Shaun Scott said. “I remember her being excited. She thought that the time was right to tell the story.”Esther Scott was born on April 13, 1953, in Flushing, Queens. Soon after, the family moved to Brooklyn. Ms. Scott attended the Bronx High School of Science, where her sister said she caught the acting bug.“She was just about in every play that they had, that I can recall,” Shaun Scott said. “She might have been bitten by the bug even earlier than that.”Ms. Scott moved to California and graduated from San Francisco State University, where she received a degree in theater arts, her sister said. After filming “Boyz N the Hood,” many other matronly roles followed for Ms. Scott — but there was one she simply could not fill.“She tried to be motherly with me, but we bumped heads on that,” Shaun Scott said, laughing.In addition to her sister Shaun, Esther Scott is survived by her mother, Sandra Grant. Another sister, Valerie J. Love, died in 2015.Over all, regardless of how small or large the role was, Ms. Scott was happy to do what she loved, her sister said.“She enjoyed all of her roles,” Shaun Scott said. “She was excited about working.” More

My partner, Solomon, and I still argue about Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2000 romance, “Love & Basketball.” The movie tells the story of Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps), which begins with Monica’s family moving in next door to Quincy’s when they are both 11, follows them as their friendship turns to courtship right before they graduate high school and start playing basketball at U.S.C. Once in college, they juggle off-court drama (Quincy learns that his pro-athlete father has impregnated a woman outside his marriage), and on-court demands (Monica fights to earn her spot as the starting point guard).These pressures come to a head when Quincy asks Monica to stay up late to help him process his parents’ marital crisis, and Monica, worried about her place on the team, returns to her dorm to make curfew. Dejected, Quincy ultimately decides to leave Monica and college and go pro. Monica, meanwhile, ends up playing basketball in Spain. Years later, they meet again in Los Angeles, and after she loses a pickup game to him, she wins his heart and a starting spot on the Sparks.In the late 1990s and early 2000s, as black directors turned to black romances in “Love Jones,” “The Best Man,” “Brown Sugar” and other films, “Love & Basketball” stood out even more for featuring black characters whose ambition (Monica) and craving for domestic bliss (Quincy) challenged traditional gender norms. At the heart of the disagreement between Monica and Quincy — and for that matter, Solomon and me — was our generation’s gender wars gone buppie: Could Monica really win the boy next door, play ball and have it all?A new crop of heterosexual black love stories — including “The Photograph,” “Premature” and the series “Cherish the Day” — by black filmmakers answers that question with a definitive yes. Though they pay homage to Prince-Bythewood’s vision with African-American female leads as complex, cosmopolitan and curious as Monica, the central conflict of these new stories is whether their characters can work through personal trauma, break free of the “strong black woman” stereotype, and be vulnerable enough to love themselves and their partners. In line with a larger recognition of black women’s multidimensionality in American culture and politics, never once do their male partners make them feel bad for dreaming big: their ambition is their appeal.Released on Valentine’s Day, “The Photograph,” written and directed by Stella Meghie, involves a pair of love stories told across two generations. In the contemporary one, a New York museum curator named Mae (Issa Rae) meets Michael (Lakeith Stanfield), a journalist who is writing a profile of Christina, a photographer and Mae’s late mother. In 2020, Mae’s flourishing career is a given. In the 1990s-set flashback, Christina leaves her boyfriend, Isaac, to pursue her artistic passion in New York City.“I think the benefit of having the two characters Christina and Mae is that you can show them going through different things,” Meghie said in an interview. “For Christina, her driving force is figuring out how she was going to be successful careerwise. For Mae, her mom’s success and her dad help her to achieve that. Now, she needs to look at what is missing in her life and what issues that she’s not confronting emotionally within herself. Hers is a more philosophical journey.”Growing up, Meghie was obsessed with films like “Love Jones” (like Christina, the main character in that 1997 drama was a photographer) and “Love & Basketball.” Later, those films became blueprints for her own screenwriting. “I grew up playing basketball so Monica was a character that I very much saw myself in as an athlete and tomboy who really didn’t know how to date or how to have a boyfriend or how to tell a guy you like them,” Meghie reflected. “And that last scene when she’s like, ‘I’ll play you for your heart.’ It makes me cry still because it is a moment where you realize you can’t just be this strong girl. He’s going to walk away if you don’t show him that you love him.”In “Premature” (due Feb. 21), the question of whether Ayanna, a 17-year-old Harlem poet, will throw away her ambition for love propels much of the romantic drama. It’s the summer before she’s due to attend college, and her music-producer lover (Joshua Boone) does not want her to sacrifice her education to be with him.Directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green, who co-wrote it with his star, Zora Howard, the film is the result of what the two saw as a lack of black love stories today, especially those that center on the experiences of young black women.“One of the things that really drove us to write this story was the very simple fact that we grew up watching love stories in the 1990s with people of color, black people and brown people, in them,” Green said. “In the current landscape, because of what has transpired in this country politically, there has been an overabundance of films that deal with black trauma, victimization, pain and suffering. We wanted to offer a film that dealt with the other side of that narrative, present a story that we felt was universal, and invite people into our lives and our love in a way that we hope is also effective.”Fortunately, this trend is not just limited to the big screen. Each episode of Ava DuVernay’s latest series, “Cherish the Day” (which premiered Feb. 11 on OWN), follows a single day of a young couple’s romance over five years. Revolving around the relationship between Evan (Alano Miller), a Stanford-educated, Tesla-driving tech engineer, and Gently (Xosha Roquemore), a bohemian, globe-trotting caregiver from South Los Angeles, it appears at first to be a story about opposites attracting.But, as the show’s format intentionally accelerates the timeline, we quickly learn that Gently’s carefreeness is not a drawback to Evan but rather an inspiration for his entrepreneurship and an indicator of her hard-earned freedom in life and love. In turn, Gently is now front and center, unlike past characters whose whimsical natures would have them sidelined as comic relief (think Freddie from “A Different World” or Lynn from “Girlfriends”).Evan “fits into what we usually see in our iterations of black love,” Roquemore said. “He’s fiscally successful and highly educated — those stories in which black people have to be perfect.”Unlike Evan, whose parents have been married for 40 years, Gently is raised by a family friend who takes her in after her father’s gang-related death and her substance-abusing mother abandons her. “Instead of Gently being hardened by her background, it makes her more eclectic or freer or makes her want to travel the world,” Roquemore said. “She’s trying to channel that pain into something else, which I think is just a little more realistic.”Noting that few Hollywood writers depict black women as both vulnerable and aspirational, Roquemore touched on how clichéd so many stories are still: “Because I live my life as a black woman that is multifaceted, Gently is so very familiar to me. When people are like, ‘Whoa, what is this? I’ve never met anyone like this!’ No, they’ve just never seen it on TV.” More