Movies

Coming-of-age dramas rarely lack for moody characters, but in the British film “Make Up,” anxiety, doom and suspense seem to blanket the entire environment. It’s a slight film, not even 90 minutes, but the atmosphere is dense.The story follows Ruth (Molly Windsor), a teenager who has come to join her boyfriend, Tom (Joseph Quinn), at his job in a caravan community by the seaside. In the cold, foggy dunes, the wind howls and foxes shriek, but Ruth and Tom seem immune to the gloom, cocooned as they are in each other’s arms. It’s only when Ruth finds strands of long red hair on Tom’s clothes that their bubble starts to burst.[embedded content]Ruth’s suspicion spikes, and the landscape around her begins to appear malevolent, fated to swallow her up. Her one comfort comes in the company of a new co-worker, Jade (Stefanie Martini), a pretty girl with a bad reputation who beckons with the promise of ease and warmth.The writer and director Claire Oakley demonstrates an admirable control of tone for her first feature film, giving her coming-of-age story the feel of a horror film. The sound design plays a huge part in maintaining the ominous overtones, with an ambient score that surges as Ruth’s anxiety mounts. Cool grays and blues blanch the palette, the performances are subdued and the camera watches the characters from afar, at a remove from Ruth’s overheated imagination.The distance that Oakley maintains keeps the danger present. There is always a sense that there is room in the frame for a threat to materialize. It’s an intriguing interpretation of adolescent discovery, one that uses horror to suggest the dread that comes with finding a sense of self.Make UpNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters and virtual cinemas. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

Sophia Loren is one of those movie greats who doesn’t often find her way into a great movie. News of “The Life Ahead,” her first feature film since 2009’s misbegotten “Nine,” was certainly welcome. But a perusal of its précis and circumstances was apt to provoke a “hope for the best, expect the worst” feeling.The picture is based on the same Romain Gary novel as 1978’s “Madame Rosa” (although its creators insists that it’s not a remake). Simone Signoret nailed the title role of that picture, and when Signoret nailed the role, it stayed nailed. Additionally, “The Life Ahead” is directed by Loren’s son, Edoardo Ponti, whose father was the producer Carlo Ponti.But what do you know? “The Life Ahead” is better than pretty good.[embedded content]Ponti’s not a filmmaker of genius, but he’s a real filmmaker. He updates Gary’s story, whose heroine is a Holocaust survivor turned streetwalker turned children’s caretaker, intelligently and resourcefully. And he gives his mother a role that’s distinctive from the one Signoret played.This conception of Rosa capitalizes on the generosity of spirit that has always been a part of Loren’s screen persona, adding grace notes of long-lived sorrows. Loren, 86, goes at the role with both a seasoned performer’s intelligence and a megastar’s innate charisma.Ponti doesn’t ask his mother to carry the whole movie. “The Life Ahead” frequently centers on Momo, a teenage Senegalese refugee who first meets Loren’s Rosa when he wrests a couple of antique candlesticks from her arms and tries to run off with them. A local doctor bribes Rosa into adding the child to her little brood, mostly the children of sex workers trying to break bad habits.Spectacularly played by Ibrahima Gueye, 14, the kid’s a gusher of sullen anger. He doesn’t get Rosa — he has never even heard of the Holocaust. But he understands what it is to be hated, unwanted. Without even talking things out, he and Rosa discover they’re kindred spirits. They are united in opposition to the status quo, let’s say. And when Rosa sees the end of her own life approaching, she asks Momo for a grave, terrible favor, and he promises to deliver it when the time comes.This picture earns its tear-jerking without becoming treacly. OK, without becoming too treacly. And it has other charming, enlightened components. For instance, it does the heart a lot of good to see The Sophia Loren dance uninhibitedly with the transgender actress Abril Zamora, who plays the mother of one of Rosa’s other charges.The Life AheadRated PG-13 for language and themes. In Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

In September 2019 at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, Greta Thunberg made headlines by condemning world leaders for abandoning today’s children to the ravages of climate change. “How dare you?” she asked, her voice shaking with anger. Truth-to-power moments like this alternate with quiet ones in “I Am Greta,” a documentary about Thunberg’s meteoric rise that suggests a new kind of hero.Its director, Nathan Grossman, catches Thunberg early, in August 2018, when the teen (at age 15) begins a solo “school strike” in front of the Swedish parliament. Her blunt warnings about the environment catch on, and go global. “I Am Greta” joins her on the ensuing daisy chain of press gaggles, youth marches, United Nations speeches and meet-and-greets with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emmanuel Macron and the Pope.[embedded content]It’s a bit of a blur, but Thunberg strikingly upends the stereotype of the young innocent as poster girl. She’s not there to give hope to adults. She’s there to give them hell, and she knows about the albedo effect, among other nuances of climate science. Like the survivors of the Parkland High School shooting, Thunberg resists being a walking symbol or letting people off the hook.Grossman shot “I Am Greta” nearly single-handedly over two years, staying close to Thunberg’s point of view and folding in her experience with Asperger’s syndrome, which she partly credits for her singular focus. She may stop for a dance break or a breather; Dad tags along on her travels and nags her to eat. But Thunberg campaigns like our lives depend on it.I Am GretaNot rated. In English and Swedish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

Hoping to deliver a Yuletide story for our dark, divided times, the directors and brothers Ian Nelms & Eshom Nelms came up with “Fatman,” a soot-black comedy with a heaping side of social commentary.Somewhere in the Alaskan backwoods, we meet Chris Cringle (Mel Gibson), not a bad Santa so much as a depressed one. A grizzled grouch who’s wearied by the commercialization of Christmas and a faithless public, Chris faces a failing business and a disappearing government subsidy. With a workshop full of elves to feed, Chris and his staunchly supportive wife (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) reluctantly accept a military contract to make the kind of item too dangerous for any child’s Christmas list.[embedded content]Pitting old-school rural values against rich-folk amorality, “Fatman” gives Santa a miniature nemesis in the 12-year-old Billy (Chance Hurstfield), a nascent sociopath fermenting in suburban luxury and parental neglect. Enraged by Santa’s gift of coal on Christmas morning, Billy dispatches his on-call assassin (the always welcome Walton Goggins) to exact murderous revenge.Waffling between anger and pathos, dry humor and dead-eyed violence, “Fatman” feels tonally befuddled. As fans of HBO’s “Vice Principals” will attest, Goggins can dance on this sort of knife edge with ease, but the script (by the directors) isn’t sharp enough to support his or Gibson’s efforts — or even smoothly incorporate its theme of reverberating childhood trauma.A more substantive and enjoyable critique is found among the elves, a multiethnic crew known only by numbers and fed solely on carbs and sugar. Awed by their efficiency and voluntary sleep deprivation, a military captain can only gaze approvingly on what seems less like Santa’s workshop than his very own sweatshop.FatmanRated R for guns, drugs and an unhealthy supply of cookies. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

Having settled into his horror-comedy groove with the “Happy Death Day” movies, the director Christopher Landon repeats his blood-and-badinage formula with the body-swap farce, “Freaky.”This time, though — despite a bright palette and intrepid performances — the blueprint feels a little tired. The smutty humor and high-school setting (complete with mean-girl posse and snarky-smart gay friend) are as familiar as Millie (Kathryn Newton), the lonely heroine in love with the handsome athlete (Uriah Shelton). They’re seniors at Blissfield Valley High, and if Millie’s mascot costume (the football team is the Beavers) doesn’t make her pitiable, then her dead father and sauced mother will.[embedded content]And that’s before she encounters the infamous Butcher (Vince Vaughn), an impressively productive killer with apparently decades of slicing under his belt. Stabbing Millie with a recently acquired Aztec dagger, the Butcher inadvertently causes himself and his intended victim to exchange bodies. They have 24 hours before the switch becomes permanent.Written by Landon and Michael Kennedy, this genre-straddler gives throwaway characters inventively messy ends and its two leads the freedom to experiment. As the swappers settle into their new forms, Vaughn and Newton prove remarkably effective at selling the benefits of their alternate packaging. Their efforts, however, are too often diluted by the film’s lazy plotting and Millie’s hackneyed emotional baggage.But what do I know? Maybe sometimes it really does take a serial killer to heal a damaged family.FreakyRated R for termination by tennis racket, toilet seat and two varieties of saw. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

“Ammonite” is only the director Francis Lee’s second feature, yet already he’s developing a strong visual signature, at once eloquent and elemental. His smashing 2017 debut, “God’s Own Country,” which followed the searing connection between a gay sheep farmer and a migrant worker, has clear parallels with the new film. Both focus on dampened souls set ablaze by unlikely passion; both unfold in harsh, punishing landscapes; both fiercely acknowledge gender and class; and both feature sudden blooms of panting, explicit eroticism.Dipping into another tale of forbidden love in a forbidding place, “Ammonite,” set in 1840s England, finds the real-life pioneering paleontologist, Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), tirelessly searching for fossils along the blustery Dorset coastline. Renowned among male peers who regularly steal credit for her finds, an impoverished Mary now sells them to tourists to support her sickly mother (Gemma Jones). Molded by years of struggle and resentment, her manner and features have settled into a stern resignation.The metaphor all but bites you on the nose: As hardened and inscrutable as the fossils she fusses over, Mary desperately needs someone to winkle her out of her stony casing. Enter Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan), dainty and beautiful and fragile with grief over a recent tragedy. And when Charlotte’s wealthy husband (James McArdle) pays Mary to keep an eye on his wilting wife while he gads about Europe, the scene is set for the kind of flinty romance that viewers of Lee’s earlier film might expect.[embedded content]That’s pretty much it for the plot. Hopeful and former lovers — an older neighbor, played by the great Fiona Shaw, and Alec Secareanu as a charming young doctor — circle Mary and add texture to the simple story. And with his narrative flame on low, Lee moves his location onto center stage: The cruelly pebbled beaches and roiling ocean, battering winds and icy mud lend a wild and unpredictable momentum that offsets the movie’s occasional listlessness.And perfectly matches the physicality of the sex scenes. Beneath impatiently disrupted skirts and bodices, Stéphane Fontaine’s camera looks without leering, lavishing the same raw curiosity on erogenous zones as on Mary’s rough, nicotine-stained fingers. The lovemaking is frantic, secretive and somewhat grim, signifying an escape for one and perhaps a trap for the other.Not much is known of Anning or her life, and Lee’s script refuses to help us figure her out. Instead, he concocts what he calls in the press notes “a respectful snapshot,” one that’s arguably a mite cautious and uneventful. The movie needs Winslet and Ronan’s skills, their ability to semaphore more with sliding glances and tiny gestures than many actors manage with pages of dialogue. There’s pleasure in deciphering these signals; and after watching the film’s surprisingly wrenching final moments, I expect that Lee will always be a filmmaker who asks us to look that little bit closer and work that little bit harder for our rewards.AmmoniteRated R for smoldering sex and frigid beaches. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More