Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Bachelorette’ and ‘Riverdale’

      by

      Charity Lawson decides among her final three men, and the long-running CW show ends.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Aug. 21-27. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE BACHELORETTE 8 p.m. on ABC. Charity started out this season with 25 men, but now has to decide among three. After Xavier was swiftly kicked out last episode for not being able to commit, it seemed like the final decision was between the lovable tennis teacher, Joey, and the Brooklynite, Dotun — that is until Aaron B hopped on a 10-hour flight from California to Fiji to put himself back in the running. In the trailer for the finale, we hear Charity saying, “you are not supposed to say goodbye to someone that you love,” so it’s safe to assume it’s going to be a messy ending. (And in case anyone is wondering, I’m team Joey for Bachelor).TuesdayPITCH PERFECT 2 (2015) 6 p.m. on Freeform. At the start of this movie, the Barden Bellas are on top of the world after they won their first championship — but they quickly fall from grace after “Fat Amy” (Rebel Wilson) rips her pants and exposes herself while performing in front of President Barack Obama. Because of the unfortunate incident, they are suspended from the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella — unless they win another championship. Come for the cameos (including Jake Tapper, Snoop Dogg and the former president himself) and stay for the riff-offs and Hailee Steinfeld’s weirdly catchy song “Flashlight.”BOBBY’S TRIPLE THREAT 9 p.m. on Food Network. Since Bobby Flay is already busy with his cooking competition show “Beat Bobby Flay” or going to Italy with Giada De Laurentiis, for this show he is sending in his “titans,” the chefs Tiffany Derry, Michael Voltaggio and Brooke Williamson, to compete on his behalf.WednesdayNANCY DREW 8 p.m. on The CW. After four seasons, this show, based on the novels of the same name, is wrapping up. Nancy and the Drew Crew have spent their time over the years solving mysteries and keeping their own secrets hidden. Now, the show will conclude with the group trying to finish their mission to save Horseshoe Bay, and we will finally see the conclusion of Nancy and Ace’s star-crossed love story.KJ Apa as Archie, left, and Lili Reinhart as Betty in “Riverdale.”Michael Courtney/CWRIVERDALE 9 p.m. on The CW. Cults, aliens, love triangles, oh my! When this adaptation of the Archie comics came to the small screens in 2017, I don’t think anyone (cast included) expected the twists and turns its seven seasons have provided. While other seasons have featured supernatural elements, including time travel, witchcraft and psychic abilities, this final one has taken us back to the comics’ roots: It is set in the 1950s, and wraps up in modern time when Betty is 86 years old.ThursdayBEDTIME STORY (1941) 8 p.m. on TCM. In 2023, we have “Red, White and Royal Blue” and “No Hard Feelings” for romantic comedies. In 1941, they had “Bedtime Story.” After divorcing Lucius (Fredric March) and marrying William (Allyn Joslyn), Jane (Loretta Young) discovers the divorce isn’t actually finalized, and Lucius tries to stop Jane from consummating her marriage to William.FridayEd Helms and Bradley Cooper in “The Hangover.”Frank Masi/Warner Brothers PicturesTHE HANGOVER (2009) 7:30 p.m. on Bravo. Remember that time that you took your two best friends and your strange, soon-to-be brother-in-law to a bachelor party in Vegas, but you blacked out, and they spent the rest of the weekend trying to find you? Oh wait, that wasn’t real life — that was the plot of this movie. “I should say up front that ‘The Hangover,’ is often very funny,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. “This is partly thanks to the three principal actors, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, who incarnate familiar masculine stereotypes in ways that manage to be moderately fresh as well as soothingly familiar.”SaturdayATTENBOROUGH BEHIND THE LENS 8 p.m. on BBC. David Attenborough is known for this work on programs including “Our Planet” and “Planet Earth.” Shot over seven years and originally aired in 2016, this documentary shows the behind-the-scenes of Attenborough working in places such as the Galápagos, Borneo and Morocco as he films some of his most well-known wildlife moments.SundayElizabeth McCafferty, left, and Rafaëlle Cohen in “The Boleyns.”Courtesy of BBC StudiosTHE BOLEYNS 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In the 16th-century Tudor England, you can count on sex, lies and back stabbing — at least in this three-part series about the Boleyn family and Anne’s ill-fated marriage to Henry VIII. The episodes, which are entitled ”Ambition,” “Desire” and “The Fall” use archives and old letters to tell the story using the words that came from the Boleyns themselves. More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Horror Movies Streaming: ‘Bad Things,’ ‘Zom 100’ and More

      by

      Inhospitable ghosts, a kid werewolf and Japanese zombies make up this month’s scary picks.‘Bad Things’Stream it on Shudder.The writer-director Stewart Thorndike wrestles with ghosts in her new slow-burn haunted hotel film.Ghosts as in spectral humans, like a little girl with disintegrating fingers, who spook the Red Roof-style motel that Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) inherits from her grandmother. Ghosts as in the emotional traumas that haunt Ruthie and the guests — her partner, Cal (Hari Nef), their friend Maddie (Rad Pereira) and Maddie’s guest, Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) — who join Ruthie at the motel to determine its fate. Then there’s the phantom of “The Shining,” a film Thorndike aspires to summon, down to the creepy joggers who might as well be Kubrick’s menacing girls in grown-up athleisure wear.Together, these spirits join forces in an unsettling and moving film about motherhood and bad memories, one that won’t so much grab you by the throat as squeeze your hand. Thorndike sustains an eerie mood throughout, but wanders off course as the stakes become fuzzy in the final stretch, when a hospitality expert (Molly Ringwald, wonderful) appears to Ruthie, and a chain saw roars to life.The film gets big assists from Jason Falkner’s minimalist score and Grant Greenberg’s cinematography that washes the Ithaca, N.Y., hotel where the film was shot in despairing hues.‘Enys Men’Stream it on Hulu.Mark Jenkin’s unnerving folk horror fable joins “Skinamarink” and “The Outwaters” in this year’s thrilling class of experimental horror films that give fear a form. Enigmatic and nightmarish, the film is about a woman known only as the Volunteer (Mary Woodvine), who spends her days alone on an isolated island off the British coast where she’s charged with tending a terrain that seems to be overtaking her emotionally and physically. Did I say alone? The strange figures who haunt the landscape suggest otherwise.Jenkin shot on a gloriously textural 16 millimeter, and uses many of the hallmarks of experimentalist cinema, like repetitive cuts and a warped score, to unsettle a sense of place and time. Figuring out what it adds up to — a purging of personal traumas? a feminist response to misogynist evils? both? — is the fun of watching this singular and lush but demanding movie that may test some horror fans’ patience and desire for plot, so if it’s a clearer and cleaner scare you want, look elsewhere.‘New Religion’Stream it on Screambox.In this penetrating Japanese film about loss, grief and self-forgiveness, the director Keishi Kondo paints a tortured picture of Miyabi (Kaho Seto), a divorced woman who at night works as a call girl, even as she mourns her young daughter who one minute was tending to plants on the family’s apartment balcony and in a flash, disappears.Miyabi has a new boyfriend (Ryuseigun Saionji), but their spark is flickering, which is why she’s drawn to the attention showered on her by one of her clients, Oka (Satoshi Oka), a mysterious photographer. Miyabi agrees to let Oka take photos of her, and their sessions become a therapeutic way for her to process grief. But as Miyabi’s grasp on reality loosens with each portrait, their macabre photo shoots take her on a darkly supernatural trajectory.Kondo is both a precisionist and a full-throttle abstractionist; one minute he fills the screen with emotionally chilly drama and the next with expressionistic images of cocoons and bubbling landscapes. Moth motifs get heavy-handed as Miyabi’s sorrow transforms into psychosis, but all is forgiven when the film so seamlessly blends a sensory visual experience with a moving study of a mother’s anguish.‘Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead’Stream it on Netflix.Akira (Eiji Akaso) hates his job, so the zombie apocalypse that hits Tokyo could not be better timed. “I don’t have to go to work anymore!” he exclaims on a rooftop as a band of the hungry undead grab for him from behind a gate. That charmingly irreverent set up is what fuels Yusuke Ishida’s zombie comedy, a live action adaptation of the eponymous manga.The film’s subtitle refers to Akira’s list of “100 Things I Want to Do Before Becoming a Zombie,” which includes riding a motorcycle (check!) and putting things in a shopping cart “without caring about price,” a cinch considering his supermarket is empty save for the zombies that the eager-beaver Akira, who played American football in college, easily outmaneuvers.The silliness that made the film so charming in the beginning becomes tiresome as the story moves away from Akira, a delightful protagonist, and instead relies on extended cat-and-mouse scenes that add little more than new characters. By the end of two, too-long hours, the walking monster shark (long story) and a heavy-handed message about individuality — which may delight teen fans — I was worn out.‘Wolfkin’Rent or buy it on major platforms.If there’s a common denominator in horror, it’s the word don’t. Don’t go into the basement. Don’t enter the woods. And don’t mess with mothers, and that goes double for moms of monsters.In Jacques Molitor’s werewolf drama, the monster is Martin (Victor Dieu), one angry little boy. After he bites another kid, Martin’s mother, Elaine (Louise Manteau), takes him to his dead father’s Luxembourg estate where the boy’s grandparents don’t know she or Martin exist. The grandparents waste no time folding Martin into what his grandpa calls “a very old hunting family,” one that makes Elaine feel like an outsider, especially when she’s shocked to watch her son transform into a wolf. From there, the film stumbles as Molitor tries to figure out where to go next, and I wish the answer hadn’t been to blow the whole thing up.Werewolf movies have been queering horror since Lon Chaney Jr. got hairy in “The Wolf Man” in 1941, and this is a small effective addition. Any parent who has ever loved a child who’s different will appreciate the story of a mama-bear protector and her young boy’s monstrous coming-out. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      How the Drama of ‘The Blind Side’ Helped Sports Fans Look Past Questions

      by

      “The Blind Side” played on sports fans’ penchant for too-tidy narratives, our columnist writes. A legal battle between the N.F.L. player and the family depicted in the film seeks to answer questions the dramatization looked past.Michael Oher, center, filed a lawsuit against Sean Tuohy, left, and Leigh Anne Tuohy, right, over their conservatorship of his business affairs.Matthew Sharpe/Getty ImagesOf course America loved “The Blind Side,” the 2009 movie about a homeless and hapless Black teenager rescued from a bleak future by a wealthy, white family. It was based on the true story of the Tuohy family, led by Sean and Leigh Anne, who took the future N.F.L. player Michael Oher into their home and raised him proudly as he made it to college and beyond.It’s the type of story we’re used to in sports, one that undergirds our beliefs about sport’s power to create lifelong bonds, help its participants overcome hardships, and build character. It’s also a simplified rendering of race in America, one that hinges on the trope that white people can be magically redeemed by coming to the aid of a Black character.Audiences sucked it up. The film took in over $300 million and Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy, self-possessed belle of the New South.But “The Blind Side,” based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis, renders a complicated reality in the most digestible format. This week, surprising news of a lawsuit filed by Oher against the Tuohys spurred many to reconsider the movie, searching for answers to questions raised by the legal claim and obscured by the film’s comfortable, tidy narrative.Oher is suing the couple for a full accounting of their relationship. He claims that when he thought he was being adopted at 18, the Tuohys urged him to sign a conservatorship that gave them control to enter into contracts on his behalf. He says that the familial bond, warmly portrayed in the movie, was a lie and that the Tuohys enriched themselves at his expense.The Tuohys have defended their actions, arguing in a statement that the conservatorship was a legal necessity so Oher could play football at the University of Mississippi without jeopardizing his eligibility.In a story with at least four versions — those of Lewis, the movie studio, Oher and the Tuohys — it’s almost impossible to discern who is telling the truth.When Michael Oher was selected in the first round of the 2009 N.F.L. draft, the Tuohy family was by his side.Jeff Zelevansky/Getty ImagesUntil this week, I must admit, I had never seen “The Blind Side.” I’d purposefully avoided it. I’m leery of movies that lean on simple racial clichés — a fatigue that began as a child, when so many of my Black heroes died at the end of films so white heroes could live.News of Oher’s lawsuit convinced me that it was time to plop down on the couch and take in the film, with the benefit of 14 years of hindsight — 14 years in which race and sports have re-emerged as essential platforms for the examination of America’s troubles.My assumptions were proved correct early in the film, while Oher’s character was taking shape. As the story unfolds, he is shown as a lost cause before meeting the Tuohys and attending a well-to-do Christian school in Memphis. The film portrays him in easy terms: as a body, first and foremost — a gargantuan Black teen whose I.Q., we are told, is low, and who has no idea whatsoever about how life operates in worlds that are not swamped in poverty and despair.Sandra Bullock won an Oscar in 2010 for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy.Warner Brothers Pictures/AlamyThe Oher of the film, particularly early on, has little agency and no real dreams of his own. When I saw that, it felt like a gut punch. “What?” I muttered. “There’s no way this characterization is true.”The Baltimore Ravens selected Oher in the first round of the 2009 N.F.L. draft. No one makes it that far in sports without a foundation of years of motivation and training, which gives credence to Oher’s long-held criticism of his portrayal in the film. He is an intelligent person, Oher has said, again and again, and he was a skilled football player well before meeting the Tuohys.Not someone who needed the Tuohys’ young, pint-size son, Sean Jr., to teach him the game in the easiest of terms — by using bottles of condiments to show formations and plays. We watch Sean Jr. at a park, delighting in putting a clueless Oher through workouts.The movie also shows the Tuohys using sports as a vehicle for Oher to develop confidence, enter a world of prestige and riches — and eventually to attend Ole Miss, the couple’s alma mater, where Sean Tuohy once starred in basketball.Oher protects Leigh Anne Tuohy when they dare to go to the neighborhoods where he’d grown up — “That horrible part of town,” she says. He saves Sean Jr.’s life when the two are in a car crash by using his massive arm to shield the young boy from the force of an airbag. When Oher struggles on the practice field as he learns the game, Leigh Anne Tuohy bounds from the sidelines and drills him with firm instruction: He must shield the quarterback the same way he guarded her and her son.“Protect the family,” she insists.A lesson delivered to Oher by a feisty white woman as if he were a first-grader (or a servant) is a turning point. Oher begins transforming from a football neophyte raised on the streets into an offensive lineman with the strength of Zeus, the nimbleness of Mikhail Baryshnikov and the size of an upright piano.Soon, we watch him play in a game, enduring aggressive and racist taunting from an opponent who initially has his way with an inexperienced rival.Suddenly, Oher snaps. He does not just block the opposing player: Enraged, Oher lifts him and drives him across the field and over a fence.“Where were you taking him, Mike?” his coach asks as Oher stands on the sidelines.“To the bus,” Oher deadpans, his tone innocent and childlike. “It was time for him to go home.”By the film’s end, the transformation is complete. We learn that under the watch of a wealthy white family, Oher’s I.Q. has improved to an average level! We see him become a high school champion! We watch a parade of coaches — real coaches, playing themselves in the film — fawn over Oher as they try to persuade him to suit up for their school.It is hard to figure out, by the movie’s telling, Oher’s motivation, or his savvy, because he continues to be portrayed as a prop — quiet, docile, a young man who, for the most part, does as his newfound family says. This, by the way, makes it hard to even figure out, all these years later, the truth of his lawsuit.Oher has disputed his portrayal in the film, telling his version of events in two memoirs.Scott Cunningham/Getty ImagesWhat we do see in the movie is that he shines in college and the pros. There he is in the N.F.L., in his Baltimore Ravens gear. He had made it to the sports Promised Land and through it all, the Tuohy family was at his side.This film had everything.The dumbed-down trope about race and class in America that Hollywood has always peddled.The simplified narrative that uncritically hails sport and its purity, the way it can change lives, always for the better, by shaping diamonds in the rough into jewels. The shadowy side of sports — the cheating, the lies, the broken promises, which, in this legal tussle, could be coming from either side — never encroach on the fairy tale. More

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Mutt’ Review: Surviving Reconciliation

      by

      A newly out transgender man meets with his estranged father, his ex-boyfriend and his sister for the first time since his transition in this drama.Playing out over the course of one New Yorker’s notably difficult day, the drama “Mutt” follows its protagonist, Feña (Lío Mehiel), as he has surprise encounters with three important figures from his life — his sister, his ex-boyfriend and his estranged father. For anyone, this lineup would represent a packed schedule, but it’s especially challenging for Feña, a newly out transgender man who hasn’t seen many loved ones since his transition.Feña’s father, Pablo (Alejandro Goic), is the first to call and the last to arrive in the film. There’s a cultural divide between Feña and Pablo, who is planning a visit from Chile. Feña doesn’t speak perfect Spanish, and in turn, his father refuses to speak to Feña respectfully about his gender. But before that visit, Feña is bowled over by another disruption. He runs into his ex-boyfriend, John (Cole Doman), at a club. While the two still have chemistry, John is reticent to rekindle their relationship, afraid of the chaos that Feña unleashes into his life. Feña has barely had a chance to recover from this surprise rendezvous, when his younger sister, Zoe (MiMi Ryder), abruptly appears at Feña’s work, having run away from school and from the home she shares with Feña’s abusive mother.The writer and director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz uses elegant observations of urban life to pass the narrative between the three central relationships. Feña juggles his responsibilities through phone calls and borrowed cars; his lifelines are doorbell speakers and public restrooms. These features of city life feed a sense of realism, as does the film’s warmly-lit and intimately framed cinematography. But that realism here is exhausting, even if it is well-intentioned — by the film’s end, even Feña seems ready to escape from the trial of his packed plotlines.MuttNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 63 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Adults’ Review: Oh, Brother

      by

      Michael Cera’s latest misfit is a poker addict unable to communicate with his sisters in Dustin Guy Defa’s keen-eyed dramedy.The adults of Dustin Guy Defa’s keen-eyed dramedy probably wouldn’t realize that the movie’s title refers to them. These three emotionally stunted siblings — Eric (Michael Cera), Rachel (Hannah Gross) and Maggie (Sophia Lillis) — are more like suspicious alley cats. What went awry in their home where Eric, a loner with patchy mutton chops and a poker addiction, has arrived for the shortest visit he can get away with? Like his characters, Defa keeps mum. The film is about this family’s inability to talk, so he’s obeying their limits.Defa’s tight and tidy focus on communication — mostly verbal, sometimes role play (“Hug me like you haven’t seen me for three years,” Rachel instructs Eric) — adds a smart layer to this otherwise familiar tale of estrangement. The trio is only sincere when reverting to the stage acts they invented as children, a showcase of vaudeville comics and singers. (The lyrics, by Defa, have an off-kilter cadence that fits the tone better than the sentimental pop-folk soundtrack.) Gross is saddled with the flattest role: a dour cynic who goes grim-faced whenever Cera enters a room. When she finally starts slinging insults in a witch’s squawk, it’s a treat to see her cut loose.Cera is known for playing misfits, but his inscrutable Eric is even more awkward about what he should and shouldn’t say. At the card table, Eric unnerves the gamblers, by, for once, blurting out exactly what he thinks. Later, he confounds a flirtatious girl (Kiah McKirnan) with a string of mixed signals. But nothing wounds him like a failed joke — his only form of connection. After yet another chilly meet-up, he sighs, “Was it my delivery?”The AdultsRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Madeleine Collins’ Review: A Duplicitous Mother

      by

      This clever, but disappointingly tame psychodrama sees Virginie Efira as a professional translator secretly living with two families; one in Switzerland, the other in France.The French psychodrama “Madeleine Collins” feels like a domesticated version of a Hitchcock movie, with all the frenzied longing and perversion leashed up and reined in. It’s too bad, considering the film’s novel premise. Usually, the man plays the two-timer, but in the film’s “don’t worry, it’s just business travel” swindle, it’s the woman who dares to have it both ways.Judith (Virginie Efira), a professional translator, shifts between households just as easily as she does between languages. In Switzerland, she lives with her boyfriend, Abdel (Quim Gutierrez), and their little girl; in France, with her husband, Melvil (Bruno Salomone), a celebrated conductor with whom she has two sons.The first part of “Madeleine Collins” plays like a straight drama about Judith’s balancing act. She takes the train between countries, seemingly gliding to and fro thanks to elegantly controlled camera movements by the cinematographer Gordon Spooner.Judith’s freakish skill for deception possesses a similar artistry. When her eldest son catches her whispering sweet nothings to her lover on the phone, Judith quickly pivots from the accusation, and turns the face-off into a discussion about her kid’s sexuality.In heated moments like these, Judith’s lies feel startlingly natural, which asks the question: Just how much of her own Kool-Aid is she sipping?Directed by Antoine Barraud, the film withholds crucial details about the true nature of Judith’s relationship with Abdel, and cleverly fills out the picture through tiny hints and glances, creating suspense through fresh turns of ambiguity in each scene.But the payoff from such fog-clearing doesn’t quite grip the way it should. Despite Efira’s efforts, Judith’s inevitable breakdown never hits a satisfyingly deranged register. Her motivations turn out to be less spicy, and more blandly sympathetic than one had hoped from this pressure cooker of a film.Madeleine CollinsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Back on the Strip’ Review: Just Some Mikes in Need of Magic

      by

      Wesley Snipes plays the leader of a has-been group of strippers vying for a second act in this ensemble comedy, which struggles to turn its gimmicky ideas into laughs.According to “Back on the Strip,” a tedious ensemble comedy from Chris Spencer, what makes a man a successful stripper is not good looks, the right moves, or a memorable stage persona: Being a true once-in-a-generation talent, it posits, requires a substantial endowment down south. That’s what gave Mr. Big (Wesley Snipes), the leader of a once-famous male revue crew, his legendary status, and it’s what allows him to see a prodigy in Merlin (Spence Moore II), a young man who accidentally reveals himself onstage during a disastrous magic show in Las Vegas.After Mr. Big spots this promise, he gets his old squad, the Chocolate Chips, back together, now with Merlin at the helm. But Merlin’s so-called gift is also the gimmicky curse at the heart of the movie. Traveling to Vegas at the behest of his mother (Tiffany Haddish, whose voice-over relentlessly narrates practically every scene), Merlin wants to become a professional magician, but his body puts him on a path that he feels is a compromise to that dream.It’s both a shame and a wonder that the film managed to assemble such a beefed-up roster of talent — Snipes, Haddish, J.B. Smoove, Faizon Love and, in a cameo, Kevin Hart — for what amounts to a stilted, factory-line comedy.Seeing Hart’s brief but flat cameo is a study in how even megawatt star power can be rendered lifeless without the right writing and direction. Snipes in particular gets lost in an overdone, confusingly drawn performance as a stud whose best days are behind him.Back on the StripRated R for sex stuff, language and some drug use. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Landscape With Invisible Hand’ Review: Hit Subscribe, Alien Overlords

      by

      The latest film from Cory Finley follows two teens on an alien-controlled earth who stream their love life to an extraterrestrial audience.“Landscape With Invisible Hand” mashes up the teen romantic comedy and alien-invasion horror genres to campy, mixed results. In an opening montage of paintings created by one of our high-school-age heroes, Adam (Asante Blackk), we’re introduced to a near-future in which an alien race known as the Vuvv has taken over Earth, not by force but through salacious dealings with the planet’s most enterprising capitalists. Over time, the Vuvv — who, far from ferocious creatures, resemble hermit crabs without shells and communicate by rubbing their paddle-like hands together — have rendered most Earth jobs obsolete with advanced technology, forcing humans to find creative ways to scrape together enough money to survive.While in art class, Adam falls for the new girl at school, Chloe (Kylie Rogers), and invites her struggling family to stay in the rundown house where he, his mother, Beth (Tiffany Haddish), and sister, Natalie (Brooklynn MacKinzie), are living. Tensions arise between Beth and Chloe’s father (Josh Hamilton) and brother (Michael Gandolfini) because the new arrivals can’t pay rent. This leads Chloe to suggest a “courtship broadcast,” where she and Adam stream their dating life to a paying alien audience — a sort of intergalactic Twitch channel, broadcast through futuristic implants. The Vuvv, who reproduce asexually, have a fixation on human dating culture and romance. It’s as unnerving and darkly funny as it sounds.Based on a young-adult novel by M.T. Anderson, “Landscape With Invisible Hand” is the director Cory Finley’s third feature after “Thoroughbreds,” and “Bad Education,” and like those prior films, it relishes in eerie discontent punctuated by oddball humor. But the plot never fully gels; characters ebb and flow in and out of the spotlight, and soon Adam and Chloe’s get-rich-quick scheme — and its strain on their relationship — falls by the wayside for a much stranger charade involving Beth and a young Vuvv who wants to play the role of a nuclear-family father. The one constant is Adam’s beautifully rendered artwork, which depicts the gradual creep of Vuvv control over human life through a teenager’s eyes.Finley’s allegorical gestures toward issues of class, race and authoritarianism are more than apparent, but the film’s tonal inconsistencies make the satire wobble. There’s certainly intention in the way Finley depicts the Vuvv’s injection of propaganda into the human school curriculum, and how he shows certain Earthlings, like Chloe’s father, eagerly prostrating themselves in front of the alien invaders. But despite real-world parallels, these thematic elements contain no bite. The Vuvv, with their blatant lack of empathy and outdated perception of human society, are treated as jokes from the beginning. As a result, even their most alarming threats to Adam and his family come across as slight and inconsequential, undercutting the film’s central theme of resiliency.Landscape With Invisible HandRated R for science-fiction violence and a space alien’s idea of intimacy. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More