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    ‘Boston Strangler’ Review: Chasing a Killer (and a Byline)

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    Keira Knightley plays a dogged journalist in this colorless true-crime drama streaming on Hulu.You don’t have to look further than the pedestrian title to guess that Matt Ruskin’s “Boston Strangler” is a spiritless affair. That title is a sigh of resignation, an I-have-nothing moan, a cold shoulder to the movie’s stars. Apparently, it doesn’t even warrant a definite article.Those stars — including Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon and Chris Cooper — probably expected better when they signed on for this trudge through a true-crime tale inspired by the infamous 1960s killings. Knightley plays Loretta McLaughlin, an ambitious lifestyles reporter with a yen for a zestier beat, who connects the dots between the first three murders and shames Boston homicide detectives into (albeit reluctantly) doing their jobs.The role is perfect for Knightley, who has always been able to slot seamlessly into earlier eras. But Ruskin’s wan, emotionless screenplay — shockingly bloodless for a movie about more than a dozen murders — fails to give the character a single believable relationship. Not with her silent children or supportive husband (Morgan Spector), who flicker on the film’s margins, symbols of domesticity denied. Nor with her testy boss (Cooper), who considers the dead women “nobodies” and would like McLaughlin to get back to her toaster reviews. And not with the more savvy journalist (Coon) who becomes McLaughlin’s partner-in-sleuthing.Despite the film’s flaccid gestures toward the sexism of the period — to boost sales, the women’s pictures are added to their bylines — “Boston Strangler” is a dreary, painfully stylized slog. Scared women scurry down cobbled streets; unseen dogs bark in the night. Washed in an unappetizing sludge of grayish green, the movie aims for serious and settles on bilious. The real McLaughlin was a fascinating, pioneering newshound; you’re unlikely to find her here.Boston StranglerRated R for posed corpses and sickly complexions. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Charlotte’ Review: An Artist’s Brief Life

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      This animated biopic about the German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon takes faithful inspiration from her life. What if it had taken more energy from her art?In the animated biopic “Charlotte,” about the German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon, the film’s most eloquent moment may be its last. Concluding on an image of the French Riviera as the sounds of a Nazi roundup can be heard, the directors Éric Warin and Tahir Rana come closest to capturing Salomon’s brief life with its tensions between the creative and the nihilistic.The actress Keira Knightley voices Salomon, who became known posthumously for “Life? or Theatre?,” the vast series of autobiographical gouaches she painted while living in the South of France. In 1938, her parents sent her from Berlin to the American philanthropist Ottilie Moore’s estate in Villefranche-sur-Mer, where her maternal grandparents had relocated.“Life? or Theatre?” — now considered an early graphic novel — is made up of 769 paintings, which are thick, unsettling and expressionistic.Like her opus, the film covers Salomon’s youth in Berlin with her father, a physician, and stepmother, an opera singer; her romance with her stepmother’s voice coach, Alfred Wolfsohn (a very fine Mark Strong); her time at Berlin’s Academy of Arts; her relationship with her grandparents; and, yes, the rise of the Third Reich.But the demons closing in on her in France don’t only wear brown shirts. Jim Broadbent gives voice to her grandfather with a sternness that hints as his tyranny. It is her grandfather’s vindictive revelation of the family’s history of mental illness and suicides that spurs Salomon to create her masterwork.“Charlotte” takes faithful inspiration from the artist’s life, and understatedly renders the facts of her tragic death before the credits. On the day Salomon arrived at Auschwitz, she was killed. She was 26 years old, and pregnant.In the end, “Charlotte” is bereft of the spirit of the artist who made the uncanny “Life? or Theatre?” What an even better tribute the movie would have been had it also taken heated energy from Salomon’s art.CharlotteNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Silent Night’ Review: Waiting for the End of the World

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      In this feature from Camille Griffin, a group of friends facing global disaster have one last Christmas dinner.Production of “Silent Night,” a survival horror film directed by Camille Griffin, started before the Covid-19 pandemic, but it’s hard not to watch and interpret it within that context.The film follows a group of friends who spend Christmas at an idyllic countryside cottage in rural England with Nell (Keira Knightley), Simon (Matthew Goode) and their three children. Behind the Christmas cheer, it’s clear that the world outside the cottage is in peril, and the friends have made a pact to make a drastic escape.The danger is never fully explained, but there appears to be a noxious cloud of toxins engulfing the Earth that painfully kills those exposed to it. Throughout, the children often serve as proxies for adults, engaging in political conversations while their parents reminisce or talk about who slept with whom in high school. Art (Roman Griffin Davis), one of Nell’s children, watches videos online that seem to contradict his parents’ messaging, and he starts to question their choices.The timing of “Silent Night” makes it destined to be viewed as a Covid-19 film, but it’s actually about climate change and the government’s inaction in the crisis. It’s an eerie movie that emphasizes the ways in which children are vulnerable to adults’ decisions, and how the wealthy skirt responsibility and protect their own. Most of the adult characters seem to be living inside a conspiracy theory, blinded by their own fear and resigned to their impending doom. But the characters, despite their histrionic representation of the wealthy class, are not compelling enough to carry the movie, nor are the horrors of the outside world fleshed out enough to frighten. Ultimately, the movie seems to ask: In the face of a dying world, should we give up or stay and fight?Silent NightNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and on AMC+. More