Movies

Approaching space travel with eyes and spirit firmly tethered to the ground, Alice Winocour’s “Proxima” takes a sadly unadventurous look at the impending separation of a female astronaut and her child.When Sarah (Eva Green) is chosen for a yearlong mission to the International Space Station, her young daughter, Stella (Zélie Boulant-Lemesle), struggles to adjust to what feels like an abandonment. Their emotional journey, however — while tender and movingly performed — so consumes the film that both Sarah’s sexist captain (Matt Dillon) and Stella’s preoccupied father (Lars Eidinger) are so faintly drawn that they barely register.[embedded content]With its detailed, documentarylike interest in the mental challenges and physical duress of prelaunch training (the film was partly shot in the European Space Agency’s facilities), “Proxima” has authenticity to spare. Yet despite its visual beauty (the gleamingly sterile photography is by Georges Lechaptois), the result is dramatically bland, with narrative threads that — like Sarah’s mysterious skin infection — simply fade from view.Torn between the maternal and the cosmic, the tactile and the unearthly, “Proxima” feels as unsettled as its heroine. And while the film’s feminist thrust is admirable, Winocour’s decision to sacrifice this for a cheap, sentimental finale is infuriating. As Sarah’s reckless last-minute actions jeopardize not only her lifelong dream, but the mission itself, they also disappointingly undermine the movie’s own thesis: that the demands of motherhood and high-stakes careers are not mutually exclusive.Making that point far more effectively are the beaming images of real-life astronauts and mothers scrolling past in the end credits. They made me wish that “Proxima” had fully embraced its nonfiction instincts and delved into their stories instead.ProximaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

Set in rural Spain during Gen. Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, “The Endless Trench” tells the story of a man who spends 33 years hidden inside his house for fear of political persecution. It’s a survival drama not unlike “The Revenant” or “127 Hours,” except what Higinio (Antonio de la Torre) must survive are not the elements or the limits of his own body, but, for the most part, isolation and tedium.Apart from a kinetic opening in which Higinio escapes capture in the Andalusian countryside and returns to his new wife, Rosa (Belén Cuesta), the film unfolds largely indoors. As the years go by, the central couple (aged impressively by prosthetics) grapple with marital troubles and parenthood amid a life of deception and fear.[embedded content]“What’s going on in the village?” Higinio asks Rosa at dinner a couple decades into his confinement. “Life, Higinio, I don’t know,” she replies exasperatedly.It’s fertile thematic ground, but as in most survival movies, showy feats of filmmaking take precedence over insight or revelation. Cuesta and De la Torre play their parts with somber, awards-appropriate dignity, and the film’s glossy production values imbue even blood and grit with a golden-yellow glow. Every emotional beat is underlined with precious visuals: a beam of light illuminating a single tear on Higinio’s face as he watches Rosa’s interrogation through a hole in the wall; Higinio wistfully examining photographs of everyday life under a magnifying glass.It’s all (neatly rendered) text, with little subtext. The directors Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga literalize this approach with intertitles — featuring dictionary entries of words like “hide,” “detention,” and “danger” — that plainly lay out the film’s themes.The Endless TrenchNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 27 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

The likelihood of my going camping was slim even before I saw Johannes Nyholm’s tent-based terror, “Koko-di Koko-da,” but now it’s nonexistent. Don’t be lulled by the jaunty title — taken from a Scandinavian nursery rhyme and emanating here from a child’s music box — this “Groundhog Day” of murder and marital discord will ensure you never go down to the woods again.Three years after experiencing a devastating tragedy, a young couple, Elin (Ylva Gallon) and Tobias (Leif Edlund), take a camping vacation, randomly pitching their tent in a deserted woodland glade. Bickering mercilessly, the two seem miserably trapped in the past, unable to reconnect or move beyond their pain. A terrifying nighttime attack by three grotesque figures and a slavering hound appears to leave one camper dead and the other bloodied and shaken — a scenario we’ll see replayed, again and again, with variations in violence and outcome. Is the couple locked in a supernatural time loop, or in a dreamlike purgatory of blame and guilt that neither will admit?[embedded content]Thick with anxiety and unacknowledged trauma, “Koko-di Koko-da” (expanded from Nyholm’s 2017 short film, “The Music Box”) plays as part pitch-black fable, part psychological allegory. Though at times tasteless and barely coherent, the story is oddly affecting, the very strangeness of Nyholm’s folkloric vision and its unnerving execution pulling you in. Touchingly animated interludes reinforce an atmosphere of surreal and pervasive sadness — the aftershocks of a grief that can no longer be ignored.Koko-di Koko-daNot rated. In Swedish and Danish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More