Movies

The coming-of-age dramedy “Go Back to China” largely unfolds in a toy factory, where workers nimbly piece together stuffed animals at their sewing machines. They work quickly, focusing on creating a product that can first pass inspection and, eventually, inspire joy. If only the movie that surrounds them were so deft.The film follows Sasha (Anna Akana), an aspiring designer whose life in Los Angeles is bankrolled by her father (Richard Ng), a toy manufacturer in Shenzhen. When Sasha is unable to find a job, her father cuts her off financially. What Sasha’s domineering dad wants, he gets, and he wants Sasha to return to China and start working in the family business.[embedded content]Sasha capitulates and moves to Shenzhen, where she meets her half-siblings, who struggle under their father’s supervision, and her family’s factory workers, who cower in fear of losing what little money they make. Sasha learns some self-awareness, but her journey to enlightenment drags: Even 95 minutes feels too long to spend in her company.Emily Ting, who both wrote and directed the movie, occasionally hits on an interesting image, like the workers at their stations, but the biggest trouble here is in the writing. By the time the film gets around to showing what a character has felt, they have already told the audience twice — and most likely another character has explained as well, just in case anyone missed the memo. Of the actors, only Ng resonates. His character is the least understanding and least understood, and, mercifully, Ng does not try to connect the dots between his mood swings. His performance suggests the film that might have been — one in which characters are allowed to just be, without having to explain themselves.Go Back to ChinaNot rated. In English and Chinese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

There’s a lot of tweed, a couple of pocket squares and an old-fashioned waxed mustache in “The Booksellers,” D.W. Young’s charming documentary about the book world — or more specifically the book-as-object world, with antiquarian booksellers trying to reinvent themselves and their industry in a digital era.Anybody curious about the inner workings of unglamorous behemoths like Amazon or the ailing Barnes & Noble will have to look elsewhere. Young made the aesthetically wise choice to focus mainly on purveyors specializing in rare books or niche subjects. Some are inveterate collectors themselves. One bookseller gives a tour of his warehouse in New Jersey, where 300,000 volumes share space with taxidermied sea gulls and a masonic throne.[embedded content]Two emotional currents run through the documentary. The gloomier one involves the older booksellers who have seen their business transform, especially with the advent of the internet and then, within the last 10 years, the proliferation of smartphones.But the younger people in this film are not only hopeful but enthusiastic. (There’s a frustrating lack of identifying captions onscreen — a puzzling stylistic choice that’s also ironic, given all the anxiety about the printed word.) This new generation testifies that a long overdue diversification is beginning finally to take place. Women are getting more recognition in the industry, as are people of color. An archivist in hip-hop memorabilia collects copies of magazines like The Source and XXL.And even some of the struggling booksellers are still elated by what they do. One of them, standing amid an inviting clutter, opens up a volume to reveal a lush, life-size centerfold illustration of a fish. “Playboy,” he says, “eat your heart out.”The BooksellersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. More

The novel on which this movie is based, a slim thriller by the great American writer Charles Willeford, is in many ways typical of the author. It examines misogyny and murderous psychosis from so seemingly close a perspective as to make the reader queasy, if not downright upset. But the 1971 book contains something extra: an erudite satire of contemporary art, often expounded upon by an insufferable mansplainer.The mansplainer, in the book and this movie adaptation directed by Giuseppe Capotondi, is James Figueras, played as a looming, imposing figure by Claes Bang. First seen delivering a lecture cum con job to some museum tourists in Milan, he’s soon summoned to the Lake Como estate of a rich art collector named Cassidy. He brings along Berenice, a plucky pickup (Elizabeth Debicki) who proves to be an impediment to the task Cassidy has in store for James. Cassidy has put up a reclusive, legendary artist at his estate and wants James to steal one of his paintings.[embedded content]One of the jokes here is that the artist, incarnated as an avuncular soul by Donald Sutherland, has no body of work — at least that anybody’s seen. This compels James to enact all manner of fraud, property destruction and worse.There’s some grim stuff here, but very little of Willeford’s mordant humor. A small and potent quantity of this quality is delivered by the larger-than-life rock star Mick Jagger in the role of Cassidy. Jagger shows a refreshing lack of conventional vanity by allowing both Bang and Debicki to tower over him. Possibly because he, and his character, have the upper hand anyway. His character is a nonchalant Lucifer and, as it happens, the strongest reason to see this movie.The Burnt Orange HeresyRated R for sexuality, nudity, language, psychosis. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. More

When a comet passes near the earth’s atmosphere in the dour dystopian thriller “Only,” it first brings falling ash and then a virus that is usually fatal to women. Millions of women across the globe perish, and survivors are forced into hiding. It’s a grim concept that “Only” embraces with fatiguing fidelity.In flashback, Eva (Freida Pinto) and Will (Leslie Odom Jr.) are depicted as a lovey-dovey couple, celebrating years together and making plans for the future. But when the pandemic strikes, Will insists they go into quarantine. He obsessively disinfects and shutters their city apartment, and protects Eva from the hostile authorities.[embedded content]The story begins on the 400th day of their sequestration. Based on the silence of her chat room for survivors, Eva may be the last woman in the world. When the police come looking for her, Eva and Will flee to the countryside, a barren landscape that at least gives them room to breathe.The writer-director Takashi Doscher forgoes apocalyptic spectacle to focus on the pandemic’s effects on Will and Eva’s romance. Too bad. Most of the scenes could have been lifted from a generic relationship drama, and it is only the couple’s conversation, not their visually desaturated world, that distinguishes them. The saving grace of this often enervating thriller is that Doscher grants time for his actors to build character and intimacy, and both Pinto and Odom offer warm, affectingly natural performances as two people facing the end of their world.OnlyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. More

“Run This Town,” a jagged, snappy procedural that splits its time between a downsizing newspaper and a dysfunctional city government, is a fictionalized account of an actual scandal. In 2013, The Toronto Star and Gawker both said their reporters had watched a video that appeared to show Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford, smoking crack. Six months later, he admitted to having used the drug, but did not resign..Bram (Ben Platt), a young journalist who writes listicles for a Toronto news outlet, is clearly out of his depth when he meets a potential source who wants to sell him the video. The movie, which ends with Bram delivering a self-righteous, mostly unmotivated defense of his generation’s work ethic, takes a weirdly sympathetic attitude toward his stumbles.The film is much sharper at city hall, where the two other major characters work. Kamal (Mena Massoud), the special assistant to the mayor, gleefully demonstrates his reporter-stonewalling strategies to Ashley (Nina Dobrev), a new press aide. She eagerly runs interference for the mayor until he shows up at work drunk and grabs her lewdly. Damian Lewis plays Ford, whose name is not changed, in a surprisingly effective feat of prosthetics.[embedded content]Making energetic use of split screens, the writer-director Ricky Tollman shows a gift for staccato cutting and clipped dialogue, as in a spirited discussion of terminology at city hall. Tollman is savvier on such details than on the big picture: The movie never quite reconciles its assorted perspectives into a coherent point of view.Run This TownRunning time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Rated R for language, inappropriate workplace behavior and talk of drugs. More

It’s easy to mistake Hunter Conrad (Haley Bennett), the woman at the center of “Swallow,” for a mid-20th-century housewife: She dotes on her husband while wearing pearls and cocktail dresses and has a Jackie Kennedy bounce to her bob. The one deviation is playing iPhone games to relieve her ennui.Viewers will anxiously wait for the “happy” wife to crack in this feature from the writer-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis. When Hunter’s not isolated in her secluded house, she’s surrounded by suffocating stereotypes: the wealthy husband (appropriately named Richie) who doesn’t really listen; the uncaring father-in-law and the mother-in-law whose generosity carries spiky undertones of accusation that Hunter is a gold digger. (There are also hackneyed horror visuals of animal slaughter.)[embedded content]Then Hunter learns she’s pregnant. Bennett is exceptional, with an eerie, glazed-over expression that seems impenetrable; she flashes her husband a Stepford smile, disguising her true reaction. The pregnancy triggers pica, a compulsion to consume nonfood items. She first swallows a marble, then escalates to more dangerous objects — a thumbtack, a chess piece, a battery — all potentially fatal to her and the baby.Mirabella-Davis, whose crew was largely made up of women, avoids pure body-horror sensationalism as he traces Hunter’s need for control to a trauma in her past. But given how nauseating it is to watch Hunter perform increasingly perilous acts of self-harm in her prison of a mansion, neither the payoff nor the psychology behind her actions makes “Swallow” an illuminating enough addition to the woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown genre.SwallowRated R for consumption of sharp objects. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. More

Nothing in “Extra Ordinary,” a comedy from Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman, suggests that ghosts have gravitated specifically toward Ireland. But they have a way of finding Rose (the comedian Maeve Higgins), a driving instructor who does her best to deny her knack for communicating with them. It’s complicated: Her father (Risteard Cooper) hosted a video series on supernatural occurrences, and she was his partner in all things paranormal. Then he died in a freak accident involving a dog and a haunted pothole, an incident for which Rose blames herself.But she still gets calls from strangers who need exorcisms. Martin (Barry Ward) phones with one problem — his dead wife is bossing him around from beyond the grave, inscribing messages in a fogged bathroom mirror or burning them into toast — and quickly encounters another. His daughter (Emma Coleman) has fallen under a satanic spell. An absurdly coifed one-hit wonder named Christian Winter (Will Forte), who moved to Ireland for the tax exemptions and dabbles in the dark arts, is planning to sacrifice her at the forthcoming blood moon.[embedded content]Again, that’s a lot of strange in this particular neighborhood. While “Extra Ordinary” overextends its ghosts-are-blasé conceit, Higgins and Ward are appealing leads, and the movie has plenty of charming moments, such as Rose watching an episode of her dad for guidance. (The amusing clips, along with the video for Christian’s hit song, “Cosmic Woman,” have been shot with a deliberate amateurishness that evokes decades-old 1-900 commercials.) And if the pace occasionally drags, the finale piles on complications with a rapidity that more than makes up for it.Extra OrdinaryRated R for vomited ectoplasm. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. More

The dramatic portrait of a crumbling marriage or relationship often lends itself to intense performance, allowing actors to spar with one another while playing out heightened, if not uncommon, circumstances. Usually this involves harsh words, yelling, crying, thrown objects.This is true of Edward (Bill Nighy) and Grace (Annette Bening), the central couple in the writer and director William Nicholson’s intimate, sometimes engaging “Hope Gap.” As the film begins, they are clearly in a Tennessee Williams-style, late-in-life rut: Edward is checked out, ambling through the motions of their day-to-day, while obsessively fact-checking Wikipedia. A restless Grace implores him to show the faintest interest in rekindling their connection and turns to aggressive tactics to get his attention. (Turning over the dinner table, for instance.)[embedded content]When Edward announces he is leaving her for another woman just a few days before their 29th anniversary, Grace is blindsided and devastated. In the middle of it all is their adult son Jamie (Josh O’Connor), who must navigate their feelings while confronting how his parents have affected his own ability to maintain meaningful relationships.Edward and Grace are intellectuals — he a schoolteacher, she a retiree assembling a poetry anthology — living comfortably in the picturesque town of Seaford, England, and Nicholson’s script walks a fine line between flowery and restrained. Obvious metaphors comparing war and marriage abound. But while you’ve seen this portrait before, and better, Nighy and Bening are so in tune with their characters that such rote renderings are easily forgiven.Hope GapRated PG-13 for cursing while divorcing. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More