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      ‘A House Made of Splinters’ Review: Home Is Where the Hope Is

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      This film, an Oscar nominee this year for best documentary feature, has an aching sensitivity for the children in a Ukraine shelter.Filmed at a children’s shelter in eastern Ukraine, “A House Made of Splinters” is made with such aching sensitivity that it’s a marvel a camera was used and not some form of mind-meld. Simon Lereng Wilmont, the director and cinematographer, catches his young subjects in the fullness of their feelings — from joy to sorrow — as they wait for a new home.The children land here because of absent parents, typically casualties of alcoholism or war from previous Russian invasions and incursions (the documentary was filmed in 2019 and 2020). Unless another family member steps up, the young ones move into foster care or to an orphanage. Mercifully, the caregivers’ affectionate morning rounds immediately show that this is an institution rooted in love, hope and common sense.Instead of focusing on the staff, though, Wilmont sticks to the perspective of one child at a time, filming for a year and a half across multiple trips. Eva, for example, yearns for her grandmother to take her in and has no illusions that her mother will recover from her addiction to alcohol. Like the others, she has moments of looking weary beyond her years, but she also turns cartwheels to blow off steam.Wilmont hews closer to relationships than daily routines, and takes in the sky-high stakes of friendships, crushes and acting tough. He susses out life forces rather than spiraling despair; he is tender without being sentimental, cleareyed without being cool. A voice-over by one staff member lends gentle framing, and some welcome moral support, as you’re left a sniffling wreck from this compassionate portrait.A House Made of SplintersNot rated. In Ukrainian and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Black Bear,’ ‘Sharp Stick’ and More Streaming Gems

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      Looking for something different to stream? We have options for you.This month’s suggestions for the hidden gems of your subscription streaming services cut a wide swath of genres and styles, including a piercing psychological thriller, a moody marital drama and a buck-wild sex comedy, with a handful of first-rate documentaries to keep you anchored in reality.‘Black Bear’ (2020)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.When Aubrey Plaza arrived on the scene over a decade ago, her bone-dry wit, acerbic delivery and M.V.P. supporting turns in comic films and television suggested the second coming of Janeane Garofalo. But her electrifying dramatic work over the past few years — on “The White Lotus,” in “Emily the Criminal” and in this scorching portrait of psychosexual one-upmanship from the writer and director Lawrence Michael Levine — suggests something closer to Gena Rowlands. The wildly unpredictable psychological drama begins as a love triangle, with Plaza as an actor-turned-filmmaker on a remote retreat with a married couple (Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon, both excellent). Over the course of a long night, the trio flirt, hint and accuse, rearranging and regrouping their allegiances, until … well, then it goes somewhere else entirely, grippingly blurring the lines between life, art and their respective commentaries.‘Take This Waltz’ (2012)Stream it on HBO Max.The director Sarah Polley has been running the awards gauntlet for her latest film “Women Talking.” On Twitter, she took a moment to winkingly, winningly note the debt owed her by one of her competitors, requesting “that Steven Spielberg return my cast from ‘Take This Waltz.’” And “The Fabelmans” co-stars Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen are marvelous in Polley’s sophomore outing, as Margot and Lou, an easy-breezy couple whose comfortable marriage is drawn into doubt when Margot is suddenly thunderstruck by her attraction to a new neighbor (understandably, as he’s played by Luke Kirby). Polley masterfully takes what could have been a weepy melodrama or a scolding screed and turns it into a nuanced and probing meditation on what it truly means to be faithful.‘Sharp Stick’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.Lena Dunham’s 2022 was a study in contrasts, with two night-and-day feature films to contemplate: her Amazon original “Catherine Called Birdy,” which seemed to challenge the very notion of who Dunham is and what she does, and the indie comedy-drama “Sharp Stick,” which took those notions into new and provocative territory. Her focus is Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), a 26-year-old nanny who, rather ill-advisedly, discards her virginity with the scuzzy burnout father (Jon Bernthal) who employs her. Dunham’s knack for writing amusingly self-destructive women and dopey men remains intact, and her own turn as the mother caught in the middle is as thorny and complicated as the movie surrounding it.‘Cosmopolis’ (2012)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.The mixed reception that greeted Noah Baumbach’s recent film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” served as another reminder that there seems something uniquely tricky about turning the author’s thematically and historically dense works into quicksilver cinema. But in 2012 the director David Cronenberg was up to the challenge with “Cosmopolis,” turning DeLillo’s chronicle of a day in the life of a young billionaire into a snapshot of self-destruction in the Occupy era, while Robert Pattinson makes a particularly effective DeLillo protagonist, all cold surfaces and questionable motives.‘The Monster’ (2016)Stream it on HBO Max.Bryan Bertino’s tight, compact thriller finds a fiercely independent tween girl (Ella Ballentine) and her alcoholic mother (Zoe Kazan) on a long, tough drive through the lonely night — and then stranded in their car, wrecked while swerving to avoid a wolf on the road. But that wolf was trying to escape from another animal, and the women soon supplant the wolf as its prey. That sounds simple enough, but that’s also not all Bertino is up to; the picture’s intricate and ingenious flashback structure makes it increasingly clear that these two are perfectly capable of being just as monstrous to each other.‘The Pez Outlaw’ (2022)Stream it on Netflix.Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel’s documentary tells the story of Steve Glew, a collector, seller and smuggler of Pez candy dispensers — or, more accurately, Glew tells the story himself, not only narrating his tale with cheerful comic vigor, but starring in the documentary’s energetically stylized dramatizations of his various heists and high jinks. That irreverent approach is the right one for this low-stakes story, which takes the tools of the increasingly ubiquitous Netflix true crime documentary and exposes them as ridiculous. ‘Leave No Trace’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.When the Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy in February 2020, it was one of many national stories that quickly receded to the background in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of claims of sexual abuse finally came to light, ultimately surpassing 82,000 accusers. Irene Taylor’s documentary details the history of the organization, and its pattern of protecting accused pedophiles in its midst (all the while ostracizing gay Scouts and Scoutmasters as dangers to children). Taylor assembles an anatomy of a conspiracy, detailing exactly how these secrets were kept so safe for so long, all while tracking down survivors from around the country to hear their stories. It’s a troubling, infuriating piece of work, assembled with a delicate mixture of righteous indignation and necessary sensitivity.‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song’ (2021)Stream it on Netflix.Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s documentary is not, it should be noted, a traditional biographical portrait of the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, and thank goodness, as there have been plenty of those. Instead, the filmmakers examine the long, strange, fascinating history of the title song — now easily his most recognizable composition, deployed in media of all kinds, covered by every artist worth their stripe, but initially a forgotten track on a poorly selling album. That odyssey, from ignored to iconic, is an inherently dramatic one, and Gellar and Goldfine bring it to life with panache, all while acknowledging that Cohen’s particular passion made its very inception something akin to musical magic. More

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      ‘The First Step’ Review: Van Jones Battles for Bipartisanship

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      This well-meaning documentary follows the liberal commentator as he works with both political parties to pass a criminal justice reform bill.On a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2019, Van Jones, a liberal CNN host, asserted that conservatives are the new vanguard of criminal justice reform. Scenes from that controversial appearance bookend “The First Step,” a tactful documentary that chronicles Jones’s efforts during the Trump administration to garner bipartisan support for a bill that would modify prison and sentencing laws. Directed by Brandon Kramer, the film presents Jones as an impassioned figure who kindled animosity on both sides for his readiness to reach across the aisle in pursuit of his goals.In many sequences, Kramer seeks to underscore his subject’s near-messianic zeal for progressive causes. Home video footage shows Jones as a Yale University law student praising books on revolution and flaunting a Malcolm X T-shirt at his graduation ceremony. But the film also makes space for critics of Jones’s methods, including the Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who says that Jones’s cooperation with the then president felt like a betrayal to many Black leftist movements.At once a story of legislative struggle and an admiring profile of a crusader, “The First Step” sometimes gets bogged down in bromides about community and common ground rather than unpacking the specifics of Jones’s approach and how it differs from his detractors’. Indeed, the most probing moments occur outside the political realm, as Jones and his twin sister recall his onetime struggle with speech impediments. The film’s analysis may be limited, but such personal moments lend it a compelling human quality.The First StepNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Last Night in New York’ Review: A Social Chronicler Explains Himself

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      A slew of well-off New Yorkers, many of them not very nice, sing the praises of their “Boswell,” David Patrick Columbia, in a new documentary.David Patrick Columbia writes a near-daily online column called “New York Social Diary,” which chronicles the galas, dinners and benefits frequented by high-income patrician folk. His is a world in which people still answer to “Muffie.” Directed by Matthew Miele, who often quizzes his subject in a tone of almost goofy awe, “Last Night in New York” invites Columbia to explain his life and work.Columbia, who appears to be in his 70s and looks like William Hurt preparing to play Samuel Beckett, speaks of his working class background and a family history that includes abuse and murder. He can be mildly moving, as when recalling his friendship with Debbie Reynolds. But with Columbia at its center — he insists he’s not overly impressed by the people who constitute his primary subject — the movie can’t help but function as an apologia for the ruling class. Early in the picture Columbia relates the high-society background of the music producer John Hammond (he was part Vanderbilt and raised in an Upper East Side mansion), perhaps hoping to make the point that rich people can be genuinely useful.
      One doesn’t expect to have one’s stomach churned by such a documentary, but then — wham! — Taki Theodoracopulos, the writer and sometime publisher whose work has been known to steer into race-baiting (to put it mildly), turns up. Like several of the other interviewees in the picture, his insights are affecting, but not in a good way. “He’s the only man who appreciates John O’Hara,” Theodoracopulos says of Columbia. This is, well, objectively not true.Musing on previous society chroniclers, Blair Sobel, a colleague of Columbia’s, says, “Dominick Dunne and Truman [Capote] were bitchy.” She continues, “David is a handsome man. Those guys were trolls.” Barbara Tober, a board chair of the New York Museum of Art and Design, chimes in, without a hint of irony or humor, “If you are in ‘New York Social Diary,’ you exist. If you’re not, you don’t.”Last Night in New YorkNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Mixtape Trilogy’ Review: Powerful Music, but a Less Powerful Film

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      A scholar, an architect and an Indigo Girls superfan talk about the musical artists that inspire them in Kathleen Ermitage’s documentary.Early in the documentary “Mixtape Trilogy: Stories of the Power of Music,” directed by Kathleen Ermitage, the composer and pianist Vijay Iyer, striving to describe the power of music, says, “I don’t want to say ‘magical,’ but I do.” This film, relatively modest in scale but broad in ambition, offers three stories of music makers and devotees.It’s a mixed bag, alternating conventional homily with genuine, substantial analysis. Dylan Yellowlees’s adventures as an Indigo Girls superfan, which inspired not only her own coming out as gay, but led her to embrace activism, working for the National Center for Transgender Equality, are uplifting. Nevertheless, the section in which Amy Ray and Emily Sailers, of Indigo Girls, break down both the musical and verbal development of “Go,” Yellowlees’s favorite song of theirs, is meatier.Next, the essayist and academic Garnette Cadogan and Iyer compare notes on their experience of racism. Iyer’s musings on the condition of being an American of South Asian descent working in the Black art form of jazz develop into a fascinating mini-disquisition on Iyer’s fascination with Detroit-based techno. It’s a music he feels is explicitly shaped for dancing in the face of oppression.In these sequences, artist and admirer interact on camera; that’s not the case with the architect Michael Ford and the rapper Talib Kweli. But their discrete ideas about music building community are compassionate and, in Ford’s case, unique. His architectural designs are directly inspired by hip-hop lyrics, and he founded a children’s camp based on his ideas.The music from the artists featured here is fine indeed, but the actual movie’s underscore, credited to an entity called “Scorebuzz,” is unmitigated treacle. As De Niro’s Jake LaMotta said in “Raging Bull,” “it defeats its own purpose.”Mixtape Trilogy: Stories of the Power of MusicNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over’ Review: A Trailblazer Gets Her Flowers

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      This documentary tries to do justice to a six-decade career in 95 minutes, which proves challenging.Before a late-career revival as a Twitter powerhouse, Dionne Warwick cultivated a music career that changed the game for Black people in America. Her influence as a crossover artist is brought to light in the new documentary, “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over.”The film’s directors David Heilbroner and Dave Wooley admiringly chart Warwick’s musical ascension from childhood gospel singer to multiple Grammy Award winner. But doing justice to a six-decade career in 95 minutes proves challenging.As the film winds down, Warwick’s experiences are presented like footnotes on a page: a little about how she scolded Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur for their misogynist lyrics, a little less about her cousin Whitney Houston’s death and a lot less about her involvement in The Psychic Friends Network.Throughout, Warwick offers amusing and amused commentary on her long history. Alongside Bill Clinton and Elton John, she looks back on her AIDS activism in the 1980s, when other stars stayed silent about the virus. Another part shows her holding up her 1963 record, “This Empty Place,” which portrayed her as a white woman on the cover in France. Hilariously, she cackles and says, “Have I changed?”Overall, “Don’t Make Me Over” gets the job done, albeit in a formulaic, straightforward fashion. But there’s pure joy in just seeing Warwick radiate the kind of charisma and grit you’d hope for from a living legend who has always stayed true to herself. In this ordinary film about her extraordinary life, it’s clear she’s not stopping now.Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me OverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More

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      ‘Love in the Time of Fentanyl’ Review: Heartbreak, Death and Hope in Vancouver

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      To combat the overdose crisis, a group that includes former and current users open a safe consumption site where shooting up does not have to mean death.In 2016, in response to record high overdose deaths in Vancouver, a group of artists, activists, and current and former drug users in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood came together to form the Overdose Prevention Society, a renegade safe consumption site where drug users could safely consume drugs. The O.P.S. staff tests the drugs for fentanyl, provides clean needles and has Narcan on hand in case of an overdose. “Love in the Time of Fentanyl,” directed by Colin Askey, tenderly documents this community’s lifesaving efforts.The film follows Ronnie, a frontline worker struggling with burnout; Sarah, an activist who opened the site and works to raise awareness about the crisis; Trey, a graffiti artist who memorializes lost community members on the center’s surrounding walls; Norma, an Indigenous elder and former drug user who cooks meals for the staff; and Dana, who is struggling with active addiction while working at the center.Despite the harrowing overdose scenes, Askey manages to infuse “Love in the Time of Fentanyl” with scenes of joy, creativity and friendship — whether it’s staff members dancing after hours, a guitarist singing an original song about O.P.S. (“O.D., O.D., O.D., Overdose Prevention Society”) or drug users chatting as they prepare their injections. A veteran talks about the trauma he endured during deployment. Another man says that he began using drugs after his girlfriend was killed by a drunken driver. All speak plainly about the challenges of quitting and the dangers of stigmatization. Though at times the film’s narrative momentum and focus on its subjects is lacking, it shows that drug users, to whom the drug crisis is more than an abstract idea, are perhaps the most capable of creating solutions to the overdose epidemic.Love in the Time of FentanylNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters now and airing on PBS Independent Lens Feb. 13. More

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      ‘Body Parts’ Review: Even Sex Scenes Have Rules

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      The documentary features performers and filmmakers discussing onscreen nudity and sex, but offers little on the subject of sexual exploitation.Cinema’s first kiss was recorded in 1896, and the American film industry has been obsessed with desire and sex ever since. The documentary “Body Parts” is an attempt to account for cinema’s prurient interests. The documentarian Kristy Guevara-Flanagan interviews performers and filmmakers — including familiar faces like Jane Fonda and Karyn Kusama — on the topic of onscreen nudity and sex. Their stories of exploitation and negotiations are supported by archival clips from Hollywood movies of the present and past.The movie is strongest when it focuses on labor rules. Interview subjects explain the use of nudity riders, contractual documents that specify what acts an actor is willing to perform. Intimacy coordinators discuss their work as liaisons between actors and filmmakers, and the documentary shows them directing actors on how to touch appropriately. In these sequences, the film helpfully elucidates the practical side of filmmaking, and personal stories demonstrate how clear contractual practices can create a safer work environment.However, the movie is limited when it comes to deeper philosophical considerations, and its use of archival footage at times undermines comments from interview subjects. They describe the frustration of having intimate scenes posted online without context, on websites intended for pornography. But this documentary also includes decontextualized clips of nudity, with no onscreen reference to the process of informing the performers depicted. And pornographic performers are not interviewed about their work rules at all.It’s not that these omissions make the movie unethical, but their absence does suggest an intellectual laziness, a lack of precision or curiosity on the complex subject of sexual exploitation and how it relates to the work of making movies. Ironically, the film mirrors the callow cinematic dynamics it critiques: It titillates, even as it scolds.Body PartsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More