Movies

About 20 minutes into “Babyteeth,” Milla — the teenager at the center of this wafting, prettily shot story — shows up bald, the long hair that a boy once praised now gone. There’s no explanation though for her newly shaved head and from the testy conversation that she has with her mother and the mention of “support” it’s obvious that Milla has become ill. As signaled by the unicorn adorning her T-shirt nothing about Milla is meant to be ordinary, something this movie tries very hard to convey.Directed by Shannon Murphy from a script that Rita Kalnejais adapted from her play of the same title, “Babyteeth” is such a fragile, earnest and inoffensive thing that I almost feel bad for not liking it more. It’s a coming-of-age story in a gently if overly studied eccentric key that follows Milla (Eliza Scanlen) as she finds love and grapples with her parents. Her mother and father are played by the nicely matched Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn, who show you the wear and tear of a shared life, both the pain and the adoration. The movie could have used more of them.[embedded content]Milla meets her guy, the improbably named Moses (a charismatic Toby Wallace) shortly after the movie begins. He compliments her, and then hits her up for money. An anxious-to-please stray who always looks like he just woke up in a rubbish heap, Moses has perpetually red knuckles and a conspicuous drug habit. At first, he seems to hang around Milla so he can steal her meds. But he proves to be a prince in greasy threads, a sad-boy fantasy who proves as pure-hearted as Milla, or rather as the story needs him to be. And so, nestled by the caressing cinematography, they float into love.With her director of photography, Andrew Commis, Murphy creates a visually cohesive world filled with lambent images that almost but not quite feel as if they had been caught on the fly. She’s attentive to color, light and texture, as is evident from the shots of a child waiting alone, a bee struggling in a pool. These pinpricks of beauty are appealing but because Murphy is trying hard to avoid obviousness they soon feel like swirling dust motes. The movie has texture but no depth, tears but no snot. Who are these people, I kept wondering. What’s ailing Milla? Does Moses ever shower?Scanlen can be appealingly vibrant and spiky, as she showed with her performance as a feral baby doll in the HBO series “Sharp Objects.” (She also played Beth in the recent “Little Women.”) But in “Babyteeth,” Murphy has solicited a largely recessive turn from the actress, whose masklike face often remains locked in neutral. Time and again, you look for some feeling to break through and help anchor Murphy’s expressionism, with its narrative ellipses and colored lights. Instead, as the attractive first hour gives way to the repetitive second, it just drifts and drifts and, alas, so does your attention.BabyteethNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

The filmmaker Olivier Assayas has worked in such a wide range of modes over the past 12 years — family dramas, an epic biographical treatment, a horror film of sorts, a coming-of-age movie — that one might think there’s no predominant theme that yokes them together.Nevertheless, a common thread is visible. Many of his pictures show an intense interest in the construction, or reconstruction, of the self, and its relation to the notion of freedom. The title character of “Carlos” broods and preens over his determination to be a revolutionary outlaw hero. The lost heroine of “Personal Shopper,” besides being stuck in a job she hates, is also profoundly unnerved over what her life means without the brother with whom she believed she shared a psychic link. The post-adolescent hero of “Something in the Air” grapples with his relation to radicalism. And so on.[embedded content]Assayas’s latest picture, “Wasp Network” (streaming on Netflix), looks like his most conventional work, but it also pushes this theme to a dizzying, eventually exhilarating, extreme. Based on the nonfiction book “The Last Soldiers of the Cold War” by Fernando Morais, it opens in 1990 with René González, played by the physically formidable Edgar Ramírez (also the title role in “Carlos”), stealing a plane he normally pilots for sky divers and flying it from Cuba to Miami.Now a defector, who has left behind his wife, Olga, and a young daughter, he is almost immediately paraded out for a news conference. In perfect English — born in Chicago, he is already an American citizen — René vehemently proclaims, “I had already said goodbye to Cuba years ago.” Describing conditions there, he seethes, “Everything is short … even the sugar is from Russia.”Back home, Olga, played with quiet strength by Penélope Cruz, works in a monstrous-looking tannery and for a while refuses to answer René’s letters. René allies himself with an anti-Castro activist group and flies out to rescue Cuban refugees trying to get to the United States on rafts.A little later, Juan Pablo Roque (Wagner Moura, the Brazilian star of the “Elite Squad” films, who can shift from boyish to sinister in the space of a single frame) dons snorkeling gear and swims from Caimanera to Guantánamo Bay, where he defects. The military men there welcome him with a meal from McDonald’s. More overtly macho than René, Juan Pablo, once in Miami, woos and weds a charming innocent, Ana Margarita (Ana de Armas, superb), and starts sporting a Rolex, which he ought not be able to afford.Who are these guys, really? About an hour in, the movie travels back four years to Cuba and introduces a character played by Gael García Bernal, who, in conversation with government officials, says he’s spent six months “studying my role.” From this point on, it’s best not to reveal too much, because the surprises here are more than story points — they deepen the film’s fundamental questions.Behind all of it is a historical fact that’s not often discussed in the United States: that during Fidel Castro’s regime, the Cubans still loyal to him saw the privations of daily life not as material issues in and of themselves, but rather as part of a continuing struggle. The revolution was not accomplished, it was ongoing.There are times in which “Wasp Network” feels like a John le Carré tale drenched in Miami sun, or even a serious-minded “Top Gun” variant. But it’s also a provocative demonstration of how strange life can get when the political and the personal intertwine like roots of a mammoth tree.Wasp NetworkNot rated. In English, Spanish and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

This exercise in opportunistic fear-mongering disguised as a thriller begins with shots from airport security cameras, arranged to let the audience see something that whoever’s monitoring those feeds would not. That is, the shady movements of a couple of men: one possibly of Arab descent, the other appearing to be a vintage European “football hooligan.”Directed by Patrick Vollrath from a script he wrote with Senad Halilbasic, “7500” — which is streaming on Amazon Prime — then settles into the cockpit of its title flight, of a German airline. Its co-pilot, Travis, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is American, and his girlfriend, Gökce (Aylin Tezel), with whom he has a child, happens to be the flight attendant on this outing.[embedded content]If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be locked in a cockpit while rabid hijackers bang on its door with a fire extinguisher, this movie really delivers. The door-banging motif is interrupted by one or another horrific bloody incident, and supplanted in the last half-hour by a hijacker screaming himself hoarse.The hijackers are Islamic terrorists. One imagines the brainstorming leading up to this decision: “Stands to reason.” “Maybe, but isn’t it obvious, lazy, and offensive?” “Nah.”And of course these bad guys happen upon Gökce, who tries to bargain with them, suggesting a kinship when she reveals to them that she’s Turkish. This situation is supposed to present Travis with a searing ethical dilemma, but mainly demonstrates it’s never a great idea to date a colleague.One thing Vollrath does well is create a credibly claustrophobia-inducing atmosphere. Then again, when you restrict your camera to the inside of a cockpit, you’d have to be pretty incompetent not to.7500Rated R. Door-banging, screaming, horrific bloody incidents. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime. More

The underwater photographer Amos Nachoum’s white whale is no whale at all, but rather a polar bear. He’s swam with sharks, anacondas and crocodiles to capture stunning stills during his four-decade career, but never the Arctic predator. In fact, no one has ever shot the polar bear the way Nachoum wants to — while swimming with it — and for good reason: These animals consider humans part of their food chain, the cinematographer Adam Ravetch points out in the film.In “Picture of His Life,” the directors Yonatan Nir and Dani Menkin provide abundant newspaper clippings about polar bear-related deaths while underlining Nachoum’s nearly fatal attempt years before. Determined to get it right this time, the photographer embarks on a five-day Canadian Arctic expedition with a small crew; what follows is less thrilling than the buildup.[embedded content]For a film granted so much up-close access with its subject, “Picture of His Life” hears surprisingly little from Nachoum himself. Between vérité clips of the journey, the film is inundated with archival footage.We learn of Nachoum’s Israeli upbringing and army past, and his move to New York. His eventual foray into diving led to his photography. In voice-over segments, Nachoum’s sisters along with marine experts try to dissect his death wish, speculating that he wants to stay relevant or that he finds similarities between the animal and his disapproving father. Nachoum’s father briefly appears in a scene that is almost more tense than the face-off with the bear: He says his son is a fool who doesn’t give to others.Nachoum remains so reticent about his true motivations that by the time he achieves his life goal, one aches for greater catharsis.Picture of His LifeNot rated. In English, Hebrew, and Inuktitut, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. View through virtual cinemas. More

“Bully. Coward. Victim.” is not the title you would expect for a documentary on Roy Cohn, the infamous Joseph McCarthy ally and Donald Trump mentor who built his name prosecuting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. “Victim” seems especially perverse considering that the director, Ivy Meeropol, is a granddaughter of the Rosenbergs. The HBO film was originally scheduled to debut on Friday, the anniversary of their execution in 1953.But “Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn” is often not the film you would expect. Long stretches are not a personal reckoning but an overview; many details overlap with “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” from last year, although the clips here are at least as good. It is also more sympathetic to Cohn than either Cohn’s reputation or the familial animosity would suggest. The title comes from a panel on the AIDS Memorial Quilt that Meeropol and her father, Michael Meeropol, stumbled upon when they visited.[embedded content]It’s hardly new to observe that Cohn was untroubled by rules or ethics, or that he was a raging hypocrite. A foe of gay rights who all but dared people to observe that he was gay, he died of AIDS in 1986. Tony Kushner, who used Cohn’s biography as one of the axes of hypocrisy in “Angels in America,” appears here, as does Nathan Lane, who won a Tony for his (to my mind miscast) recent performance as Cohn.As for Cohn’s influence on Trump, the film suggests that he helped convince the then-real estate developer that he had the aptitude to be a nuclear-arms negotiator. The vintage footage of Cohn discussing Trump plays as alternately prescient and groan-worthy. Cohn says that Trump dislikes “anything political” but suggests that “not too far in the distant future, you’re going to see Donald Trump in other parts of the country.”What’s most striking are the marginal anecdotes of Cohn’s shamelessness. The writer Peter Manso, a consultant on the documentary, sifts through Cohn’s old bills to illustrate Cohn’s habit of stiffing people. The gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who tells her own amusing anecdote about Cohn’s derelict payments, admits that he exploited her perch at The New York Post. The taste-flouting filmmaker John Waters recalls being appalled spotting Cohn summering in the gay haven of Provincetown, Mass.Given the filmmaker’s connection to the material and her access, it is surprising, even strangely admirable that much of “Bully. Coward. Victim.” plays so conventionally. True, Ivy Meeropol has examined the Rosenbergs case onscreen before (in the 2004 documentary “Heir to an Execution”), and she interweaves family history here. In one fiery TV clip, Michael Meeropol confronts Cohn to his face, though it didn’t necessarily take a relative to find that scene.Cohn was a paradox, and so is this documentary — a brisk, entertaining, quite full primer that nevertheless feels like it missed an opportunity for a unique angle or approach.Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy CohnNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on HBO. More

In the mythologized version of the Johnny Cash story, his wife and collaborator, June Carter, is portrayed as the saintly woman who rescued the country singer from the dark side of fame. That story was immortalized in the 2005 film “Walk the Line,” for which Reese Witherspoon won the Oscar for best actress. Cash’s first wife, Vivian Liberto (played in that film by Ginnifer Goodwin), on the other hand, was made to look like a petty shrew on the sidelines when really she was the inspiration for the song “I Walk the Line.”The documentary “My Darling Vivian” attempts to salvage the reputation of a woman believed to be misconstrued and shoved into obscurity. Directed by Matt Riddlehoover and produced by his husband, Dustin Tittle (a grandson of Cash and Liberto’s), this may be the most comprehensive film portrait of Liberto yet, but the absence of her own voice is still achingly felt. (She died in 2005.)[embedded content]
Supported by abundant archival footage, Liberto and Cash’s four daughters — Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara — make revisionist cases for their mother in separate talking-head interviews. They recall the increasingly longer stretches of their father being away. Alone, their mother warded off everything from rattlesnakes on their property to threats from the Ku Klux Klan, who thought that Liberto, an Italian-American born in Texas, was Black.“My Darling Vivian” (its title is taken from Cash’s letters to Liberto) also chips away at Carter’s public persona; the daughters say she took credit for raising them. Such revelations are illuminating, but too much of the film harps on the same points about how Liberto was underappreciated. The film, ultimately, still lacks Liberto’s own sense of agency.My Darling VivianNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on virtual cinemas. More

In “Miss Juneteenth,” the charming feature directing debut of Channing Godfrey Peoples, giving voice to black girls is a priority, not an option.Available on demand, the film follows Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie, playing her part to perfection), a single mother in Fort Worth who wants her 15-year-old daughter, Kai (Alexis Chikaeze), to win the Miss Juneteenth pageant, an annual competition that awards the winner a scholarship to a historically black college or university of her choice. Turquoise — who won the title in 2004 — is convinced that Kai will take better advantage of the opportunity and secure a brighter future. But Kai has other aspirations and desires: She wants to try out for the school dance team, hang out with her crush and live a life generally unencumbered by her mother’s puritanical rule.[embedded content]The road to the pageant is a challenging and expensive one. Turquoise, who works two jobs to make ends meet, struggles to just keep up with her bills, let alone the costs associated with the pageant — from the registration fee to Kai’s dress. She tries to lean on Kai’s father (Kendrick Sampson) for support, but he consistently shows himself to be unreliable and a source of added stress in her life.The movie tackles multitudinous themes in its roughly 100 minutes, from the significance of Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, to the legacy of racism in predatory bank lending practices. But what’s most impressive is the amount of space Peoples’s black female characters inhabit in the narrative.Instead of just depicting the myriad ways black women carry their communities, the movie goes further to explore how these women and black girls support each other in a world that often fails them. Even during their tensest moments, Turquoise and Kai share kisses and knowing smiles, or play fight and cuddle, repeatedly underscoring the tenderness in their relationship.The movie also takes time to consider what it means to come of age as a black girl. Its best moments are the ones focused on Kai — when she is hanging out with her mother, teaching her father a viral dance or practicing her own moves in front of the mirror. They show that Kai’s present is just as worthy of a cause to fight for as her future.Miss JuneteenthNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Rent or buy on Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More