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      ‘Ghosted’ Review: A C.I.A. Meet Cute

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      A date becomes a spy skirmish in this action-heavy, paint-by-numbers Apple TV+ rom-com starring Chris Evans and Ana de Armas.“Ghosted,” a frothy spy-thriller rom-com in the tradition of “Romancing the Stone” and “The Jewel of the Nile,” is one of the least convincing movies I have ever seen. I don’t just mean that the dialogue is trite and phony, or that the characters feel inauthentic, or that the action is badly choreographed, or even that the plot is paper-thin and contrived, although all of this is regrettably true.I mean that “Ghosted” barely seems like a real movie. It has movie stars, in the figures of Ana de Armas and Chris Evans (and, as the villain, Adrien Brody). It has a competent director, Dexter Fletcher, whose hit “Rocketman” wasn’t half-bad.But this tedious, unfunny, screamingly unoriginal romantic adventure film is so flimsy and so insubstantial that it’s practically vaporous.Evans, who can be charming, stars as Cole, a clean-cut, down-to-earth farmer who dreams of publishing a book on the history of agriculture. While working at his family market stall one afternoon, he meets Sadie (de Armas), and within minutes the two embark on a high-speed fling. But it turns out that Sadie is a C.I.A. agent, code name the Taxman, and in a gender-reversed “True Lies” situation, Cole is swiftly embroiled in Sadie’s high-stakes world of international espionage, whisked off in escapades across London and far-flung destinations that look like they were filmed on green screens.Evans and de Armas are likable actors, but any charm they might have mustered for each other is torpedoed by the facile writing, featuring such memorable zingers as “I have dated some crazies in my day, but you are certifiable!”The spy stuff is also laughable. The movie seems more concerned with shoehorning in transparently fan-baiting cameos (including Sebastian Stan and Ryan Reynolds) than with developing anything remotely like credible stakes, while the action set pieces suffer from unimaginative staging and some of the cheapest-looking visual effects in recent memory.GhostedRated PG-13 for some graphic violence, torture, strong language and mild sexual content. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More

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      ‘Twilight’ Review: Film Noir in the Hungarian Hills

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      A retired detective returns to his job to hunt down a child killer in this distinctive and Béla Tarr-influenced film.“Twilight” adapts a 1958 Friedrich Dürrenmatt detective story. It’s the tale of a retired police chief who returns to his work to find a child murderer. In György Fehér’s adaptation — released internationally in 1990, but now showing in the United States for the first time — the unnamed detective’s investigation begins when a young girl is discovered dead near a statue of an eagle holding a sword. This statue is of a Turul, a long-observed symbol of Hungarian national strength. Much like this arresting image, “Twilight” imposes a uniquely Hungarian perspective on what might have otherwise been simple pulp material.Fehér’s adaptation sets the story squarely in the Hungarian countryside. It is light on specific details like the year of its events or the names and histories of its principal figures. The emphasis on atmosphere over evidence grants the film a fable-like quality. Even the main suspect is known only to the detective (Péter Haumann) as a giant. Fehér builds up his nightmare using visual techniques that are redolent of his countryman and sometime collaborator, the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, who is best known for his formally and philosophically challenging epics. (Fehér produced Tarr’s “Sátántangó,” and Tarr is credited as a consultant on this film.)Tarr’s brutalist influence is visible onscreen, present in the film’s stark black-and-white cinematography, its long takes and Fehér’s elaborate, painterly camera setups. The images create the impression of a bleak landscape, a Hungary where the past, present and future appear drained not only of color, but of hope itself. Fehér’s actors offer muted, naturalistic performances, and Fehér limits the number of camera setups and cuts down on extraneous dialogue. His abundant restrictions make simple elements like cuts to close-ups or the detective plot play as cracking indulgences. It’s a style so minimalist, it approaches maximalism — and this combination of pulp and precision creates an arresting and unique work of film noir.TwilightNot rated. In Hungarian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Dry Ground Burning’ Review: Feminist Gangsters, Brazilian Style

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      Featuring a cast of local actors playing semi-fictionalized versions of themselves, this movie flies in the face of the country’s political establishment.In Hollywood these days, radical chic is back in fashion. A number of sexy thrillers that dramatize the history of radical politics or pose provocative hypotheticals about the future of activism have emerged. For my money, none match the incendiary power of “Dry Ground Burning,” a feminist gangster movie from Brazil that spits oil in the face of that country’s political establishment.Directed by Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós, “Dry Ground Burning” is a film about insurrection set in the central Brazilian region of Sol Nascente. Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado) is the leader of an all-female crew that steals oil from underground pipelines, and as the kingpin, she strikes deals with gasoline vendors who sell the product at a discounted price. Chitara’s half sister, Léa (Léa Alves da Silva), an androgynous charmer with a mane of black hair, joins the posse after an eight-year stint in prison, and her arrival inspires several nostalgic conversations that temper the action with hangout-movie vibes. The two siblings nonchalantly discuss their playboy father and Léa’s 12-year-old son, conceived with an ex-con who was murdered.Meanwhile, their compatriot, Andreia (Andreia Vieira), launches a campaign against the pro-cop candidate running for office. Hers is the Prison People Party, which represents those with criminal records, the working class, and Indigenous and Black people — in other words, those who fared the worst under the policies of Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government, which was in power when the film was in production.Because most people aren’t familiar with the films of Pimenta and Queirós, I’m compelled to draw a connection between “Dry Ground Burning” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” two pyromaniacal dystopian westerns in which lawless women are not only their own saviors but everyone else’s, too.But if “Fury Road” is a perpetual joyride, “Dry Ground” erupts between smoke breaks, switching between moments of rugged quietude and bracing scenes distinguished by invigorating, industrial sound design and the collective exultation of bodies — like the one with a motorcade carrying the rowdy members of an anarchic political party hollering a profanity-laced campaign jingle. Sodium-lit nightscapes filled with steely, gun-toting dames recall the glossy crime dramas of Michael Mann (“Heat”).Yet “Dry Ground Burning” isn’t divorced from reality. Though Pimenta and Queirós sprinkle science-fiction touches throughout the film, their approach is steeped in renegade documentary methods and influenced by the contributions of real locals. The cast is composed of nonprofessional actors from the region who play semi-fictionalized versions of themselves — Silva, for instance, joined the production when she was released from prison. In order to clear the streets for the motorcade scene, the People Prison Party was officially registered as a political campaign.Pimenta and Queirós invent a world in which Brazilian women at the very bottom of the social totem pole take matters into their own hands. They do so without an ounce of fear or self-pity — and in killer style to boot. And it’s not just artist types and famous actors who enact these possibilities, but the very people most empowered by imagining themselves otherwise.Dry Ground BurningNot rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Black Panther’ and the New Blueprint for Female Warriors Onscreen

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      Danai Gurira: For Dominique to be out there now is thrilling. We’re both children of immigrants and, though our journeys are different [Thorne’s family is from Trinidad; Gurira’s is from Zimbabwe], we have that similarity when your parents come from another place and you’re used to a dual cultural existence. There’s something courageous in her; she’s not going to walk into a space unprepared. She’s wise for her years and grounded. There was a tender day on set [for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” filmed after Chadwick Boseman, the franchise’s original star, died in 2020] when we connected deeply. You never expect grief; it just hits when it wants. We had to lean on each other, and Dominique understood what we were dealing with.When I was in grad school [for acting, at N.Y.U.], I was distraught about how terribly African women were portrayed in the West, if they ever were. Putting out stories that countered that — whether through acting in my first play [“In the Continuum,” 2005, co-written with Nikkole Salter] or watching others in my subsequent plays [including “Eclipsed” on Broadway in 2016] — felt like what I was meant to do. The joy for me is to see Black women from around the world getting our stories told: Letitia [Wright, another “Black Panther” actor] is Guyanese British, and she had to learn a ton of Shona when she was the lead in my play at the Young Vic [“The Convert,” 2018-19, in London]. To have her doing our accents and intonations beautifully was like seeing the diaspora embracing itself.culture banner More

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      ‘Chevalier’ Review: A Black Virtuoso Rocks the Court of Marie Antoinette

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      A new movie about Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-George, may owe as much to “Bridgerton” as it does the history books.Set in 18th-century Paris, “Chevalier” begins with a flourish. In a concert hall in pre-revolutionary France, a man makes a beeline toward the virtuoso conducting a string orchestra to the rapt delight of his audience. The interloper’s back and his white wig give nothing away of his countenance. Cue the collective gasp when this man is revealed to be Black and suggests that the two play a piece together.The duo’s dueling fiddles will deliver a new star and prompt the hot-under-his-ruffled-collar violinist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to ask, “Who the [expletive] is that?”This will not be the only intentionally discordant gesture in “Chevalier” — based on the story of Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges — but it is the boldest in a film that bows to “Bridgerton,” while lacing its intrigue with contemporary racial-cultural wounds.The real Chevalier de Saint-Georges looks commanding and impossibly handsome in a rare portrait from the era. And the actor Kelvin Harrison Jr. matches that beauty. He also makes believable Bologne’s celebrated vigor and grace. Harrison’s most recent roles have been in a trio of films — “Waves,” “Monster,” “Luce” — notable for featuring young men who are often as troubling as they are troubled. Here the actor brings swagger and hints of hubris to the slightly more mature Frenchman.Born on the island of Guadeloupe, Joseph Bologne was the son of an enslaved Senegalese woman and a French plantation owner. He was, for a spell, an incandescent figure in Marie Antoinette’s court and later, after a change of allegiance, a military leader during the revolution. Outlier and insider, he’s a figure ripe for reclamation. That this movie — directed by the Canadian filmmaker Stephen Williams and written by Stefani Robinson — leans too mightily on romance to the detriment of exploring more fully his genius feels like a missed opportunity.Joseph’s father’s parting words as he leaves his young son at an elite school will become Joseph’s raison d’être as he excels in music, fencing and pretty much anything else he takes on: “Joseph you must be excellent, always excellent. No one can tear down an excellent Frenchman.” As the movie unfolds, that final assertion will require a qualification — namely, unless that Frenchman is Black — but the drive it instills in Joseph also resonates with the current celebration of ‌Black excellence in the United States.In “Chevalier,” colonialism and paternalism have roles in shaping Bologne. But it’s his relationship with four women that proves crucial: his royal ally, Queen Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton); his enemy, the opera singer La Guimard (Minnie Driver); his muse and romantic consort, the Marquise de Montalembert, Marie-Josephine (Samara Weaving); and his mother, Nanon (Ronke Adekoluejo).Driver has wicked fun as the diva who throws her support behind the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck when the position as head of the Paris Opera opens. It is a post Joseph wants and feels he deserves. Whether he gets it is one of the movie’s central tensions.Adekoluẹjo brings a cultural shrewdness to Nanon, who arrives from the Caribbean shortly after the death of Joseph’s father. Their mother-and-man-child reunion is teary but also pointed and will usher in a slow dawning in Joseph’s understanding of his Blackness. Joseph has grown accustomed to operating at the top of his game among Paris’s elite. But as Nanon knows, the rules of the game are rigged.ChevalierRated PG-13 for thematic content, some strong language, boudoir scenes and violence. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Quasi’ Review: Medieval Inanity

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      The new film from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard is a goofy take on the story of the famed hunchback Quasimodo.You’ve heard of Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, the actor Brian Cox announces at the start of “Quasi,” but you haven’t heard this version. And maybe you shouldn’t — unless, that is, you’re in a certain state of mind at a certain time of night. In “Quasi,” the latest film from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, the disfigured peasant from the famed Victor Hugo novel is working in medieval torture chambers when he’s suddenly thrust into a web of murderous royal intrigue.After the queen of France (Adrianne Palicki) takes a liking to Quasi, he finds himself at a dinner with the obnoxious king (Jay Chandrasekhar), who asks him to assassinate the pope (Paul Soter), a longtime rival. During the attempt, though, the pope asks Quasi to kill the king, leaving the hunchback in a bind.The high-stakes political affair takes place with the goofy, lighthearted energy you’d expect from the comedy group behind “Super Troopers” and “Beerfest” (“Quasi” is directed by Kevin Heffernan, who stars in the film alongside the rest of the Broken Lizard troupe): It’s dumb fun that is at times entertaining, at times flat.At the heart of this film is a thematic twist that would be at home in a Seth Rogen movie: a repressed bromance between Quasi and his “hut-mate,” Duchamp (Heffernan), both of whom refuse to admit they’re each other’s best friends. The parodic period-piece framework lends an added layer of whimsy and offbeat jokes to the Broken Lizard sensibility — though that is perhaps not enough to justify a film that can, at times, feel like a so-so sketch that didn’t warrant a feature. But you’ll most likely get a few laughs and mild enjoyment when you just surrender yourself to the inanity of it all.QuasiRated R for language, some crude/sexual content and violence. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Trenque Lauquen’ Review: Lose Yourself

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      This sprawling Argentine film, about a missing botanist, finds liberation in being lost — and treats mystery as an end in itself, not just as a road to revelation.“Trenque Lauquen,” a wondrous multipart epic from the Argentine director Laura Citarella, opens with men on a quest. Laura (Laura Paredes), a visiting botanist working on research in Trenque Lauquen, a town southwest of Buenos Aires, has disappeared, leaving only a cryptic note behind: “Farewell, farewell. I’m leaving, I’m leaving.” Rafael (Rafael Spregelburd), Laura’s boyfriend, and Ezequiel (Ezequiel Pierri), her research colleague turned almost-lover, drive through the countryside, seeking her traces.As the film unfolds across twelve chapters (split into two feature-length parts), the men’s pursuit grows like a wild, proliferating vine: Missing women multiply, and the film’s mysteries fork into new ciphers. Yet it’s only in the seventh chapter that someone questions the very premise of the search for Laura, asking Ezequiel, “What makes you think she wants to be found?”“Trenque Lauquen” undermines the hubris of discovery — a distinctly masculine impulse, and a narrative principle we often take for granted. Produced by El Pampero Cine, an Argentine production company known for sprawling, Borgesian films like the more than 13-hour “La Flor” (2019), Citarella’s film posits that being lost can be a kind of liberation, and that mystery, in movies, can be an end in itself, rather than a path to a revelation. The first, six-chapter part alternates between two timelines and two quests: Rafael and Ezequiel’s search for Laura, and flashbacks to Ezequiel and Laura’s attempts to track down the identity of Carmen Zuna (played in fantasy sequences by Citarella), a schoolteacher who had a passionate affair with a local landowner in the 1960s. Laura finds their erotic love letters hidden away in books at the library and becomes enamored, her passion soon infecting Ezequiel.The second chapter starts to illuminate the circumstances behind Laura’s disappearance, only to unwrap an entirely new puzzle: this time about two lesbian lovers in the suburbs who seem to be conducting a scientific experiment, secretly raising a mutant creature. Frankenstein comes to mind here and also as a metaphor for the film’s patchwork structure. Relayed through letters and notes in the first half, and Laura’s voice-over in the second, the many micro-stories that make up the narrative seem to take on lives of their own, crisscrossing and diverging unexpectedly. Familiar hints of horror and detective stories appear like red herrings, but the ultimate effect is of a campfire tale: The pleasure lies in the telling — the invention of fictions, the performance of emotions — rather than in the details of plot. Once you lose yourself in the thickets of “Trenque Lauquen,” you won’t want to be found.Trenque LauquenNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 4 hours and 22 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Carmen’ Review: We’re Not in Spain Anymore

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      The choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s directing debut is an of-the-moment but scattered take on a classic love story.You can’t have “Carmen” without the color red.In the choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s debut film — an adaptation of the classic story, previously told in prose by Prosper Mérrimée and more famously in opera by Georges Bizet — it’s there from the start, in the opening titles, the pedals of a rose, the title heroine’s shirt.But nothing more than color signifies that this is a “Carmen” tale, that old psychosexual drama of a male soldier so seduced by a Spanish femme fatale, he forgets his duties and is driven to jealousy and murder. No, here Carmen is instead a young Mexican woman both headstrong and naïve, restless and searching — much like the film itself.That is disappointing for a movie seemingly assembled from promise: in Millepied, an enterprising dance-maker who pioneered small-screen performance during the pandemic; in Nicholas Britell, a composer of knockout, earworm-rich soundtracks; in Rossy de Palma, an alluring, otherworldly fixture of Pedro Almodóvar films; and in Paul Mescal, a fast-rising, Oscar-nominated star capable of conveying swaths of biography and feeling in a sadly handsome smile.They make for a film with elements of dance on camera, musical, of-the-moment melodrama and visual poetry — but without a thorough commitment to any one of those and few, if any, moments of coalescence. The screenplay is spare to the point of meager; characters speak in clichés, like claiming that music won’t pay the bills, and are divided, boringly, into categories of unequivocally good (Mexican immigrants mainly) and bad (all white characters except Mescal’s Aidan).No dialogue, anyway, communicates more effectively than Britell’s soundtrack, a constant presence, tense and evocative, functioning like opera by fully integrating with, if not driving, the story rather than underscoring it. The movie also says more through movement than speech: percussive flamenco; climactic krumping in a fight sequence starring and set to an original song by the D.O.C.; a touching pas de deux of Carmen’s balletic fluidity and Aidan’s awkward, failing attempts to match her.Little seems to keep this couple of lost souls — he a tormented war vet, she an undocumented Mexican immigrant on the run — together other than fear. As Carmen, Melissa Barrera is beautiful but somewhat blank, an obtuse mystery next to Mescal, his face having the shape and solemnity of a Roman statue, but eyes that repeatedly betray his pain. De Palma is a welcome source of levity as Masilda, a nightclub owner who tells Aidan that if she were younger she would eat him up like a plate of chilaquiles.Masilda tells Carmen that her name means poem, that she is “the most beautiful poem made into a woman.” Yet much of the film’s poetry comes from the cinematography of Jörg Widmer — a veteran of Terrence Malick’s sweeping, awe-struck camera gestures — who renders a desert landscape expansive and entrapping, and finds wonder in the otherwise stressful tangle of Los Angeles freeways. Millepied relishes close-ups of bodies in motion, and scatters dreamy symbolism throughout the story, populating his world with angels of death.Carmen and Aidan are connected, before they meet, by small flames that rise spontaneously from the ground. In the end, they are separated by tragedy. Their trajectory couldn’t be simpler, but this film, at nearly two aimless hours, doesn’t seem interested in, or capable of, that kind of focus.CarmenRated R for language, nudity and violent dancing. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More