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      ‘The Pope’s Exorcist’ Review: A Head-Spinning Genre Mash-Up

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      The buddy-priest action-comedy-horror hybrid we didn’t know we wanted has finally landed.It’s hard to pick the most surreal part of Julius Avery’s new horror film. It could be that the main character is based on the very real Rev. Gabriele Amorth, who used to be the Vatican’s chief exorcist (in a head-spinning twist, William Friedkin, the director of “The Exorcist,” once made a documentary about him). Or maybe it’s that Father Amorth is portrayed as an espresso-drinking, scooter-riding maverick by Russell Crowe in one of his most engaging performances in years. He is dispatched by the Pope (the cult Italian actor Franco Nero) to an isolated Spanish abbey where a young boy, Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), has started producing ungodly growls, changing colors and shapes, and making inappropriate moves on his mother (Alex Essoe, a Mike Flanagan horror regular).Amorth has his work cut out for him, but luckily he is paired with the inexperienced but game Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto), which adds a dollop of buddy-priest action comedy to an already genre-full plate. The two men have excellent, er, chemistry with the ancestral evil figure who has taken over Henry and is magnificently voiced by Ralph Ineson. Avery (“Samaritan”) drives the film at a pace as caffeinated as Amorth himself, and manages to incorporate legitimate scares into a plot halfway between Indiana Jones and a Dan Brown potboiler, with camp touches worthy of Ken Russell.“The Pope’s Exorcist” ends with a shameless suggestion that there is room for a sequel or even an entire series. It is not an unwelcome prospect.The Pope’s ExorcistRated R for demon-induced expletives and glimpses of naked ladies. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Livestreaming ‘Made All the Difference’ for Some Disabled Art Lovers

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      When shuttered venues embraced streaming during the pandemic, the arts became more accessible. With live performance back, and streams dwindling, many feel forgotten.For Mollie Gathro, live theater was a once-a-year indulgence if the stars aligned perfectly.Gathro has degenerative disc disease and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, resulting in joint pain, weakness and loss of mobility. Because of her disabilities, going to a show meant having to secure accessible seating after hourslong phone calls with her “nemesis,” Ticketmaster; finding a friend to drive her or arranging other transportation; and hoping her body would cooperate enough for her to actually go out.But when live performance was brought to a halt three years ago by the coronavirus pandemic, and presenters turned to streaming in an effort to keep reaching audiences, the playing field was suddenly leveled for arts lovers like Gathro.From her home in West Springfield, Mass., Gathro suddenly had access to the same offerings as everyone else, watching streams of Gore Vidal’s drama “The Best Man” and of a Guster concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. For a while, it seemed, everything was online: performances by the Berlin State Opera or the Philadelphia Orchestra; dances by choreographers like Alonzo King and a New York City Ballet Spring Gala directed by Sofia Coppola; blockbuster movies that were released to streaming services at the same time they hit multiplexes; even the latest installment of Richard Nelson’s acclaimed cycle of plays about the Apple family for the Public Theater was streamed live.“I was overjoyed, but there was also this tentative feeling like waiting for the other shoe to drop because they could take the accessibility away just as easily as they gave it,” Gathro, 35, said, “which feels like is exactly what is happening.”It is happening. With live performance now back, and some theaters and concert halls still struggling to bring back audiences, presenters have cut back on their streamed offerings — leaving many people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, who have been calling for better virtual access for decades, excluded again.While many presenters have cut back on streaming, there is still more available than there used to be. In September the San Francisco Opera streamed a performance of John Adams’ “Antony and Cleopatra” starring Amina Edris. Cory Weaver/San Francisco OperaLivestreaming “opened up the door and showed us what is possible,” said Celia Hughes, the executive director of Art Spark Texas, a nonprofit that aims to make the arts more inclusive and accessible. The door, she said, has begun to close again.Aimi Hamraie,​​ an associate professor of medicine, health and society at Vanderbilt University who studies disability access, said that the decisions to cut back on streaming options “were not made with disabled people in mind.”“We’ve all been shown that we already have the tools to create more accessible exhibitions and performances, so people can no longer say it’s not possible,” Hamraie said. “We all know that that’s not true.”One in four adults in the United States has some form of disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But more than three decades after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act made it illegal to discriminate based on disability, advocates say that it remains difficult for many disabled people to navigate arts venues: gilded old theaters often have narrow aisles, cramped rows and stairs, while sleek modern spaces can be off-the-beaten-path or feature temporary seating on risers.To be sure, there are far more streaming options available now than there used to be. The San Francisco Opera has been livestreaming all of its productions this season, and last month the Paris Opera announced new streaming options. Second Stage Theater simulcast the last two weeks of its Broadway run of “Between Riverside and Crazy” and “Circle Jerk,” a Zoom play that became a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for drama, returned for a hybrid run last summer for both live and streaming audiences. The Cleveland Orchestra has joined the growing number of classical ensembles streaming select performances. And this year’s Sundance Film Festival was held in person in Park City, Utah — but also online.Second Stage Theater simulcast the last two weeks of its Broadway run of “Between Riverside and Crazy.” From left to right: Stephen McKinley Henderson, Victor Almanzar, Common.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut venues and producers have cut back on streaming for a number of reasons: the costs associated with equipment and the work required to film performances; contracts that call for paying artists and rights holders more money for streams; and fears that streams could provide more incentive for people to stay home rather than attend in person.Arts lovers with disabilities are feeling the loss.“It made all the difference because I felt like during the pandemic, I was allowed to be part of the world again, and then I just lost it,” said Dom Evans, 42, a hard-of-hearing filmmaker with spinal muscular atrophy, among other disabilities, and a co-creator of FilmDis, a group that monitors disability representation in the media.The recent experiments with streaming have raised questions of what counts as “live.” Some events are heavily produced and edited before they are made available online.“It’s better than nothing, but it’s not the same,” Phoebe Boag, 43, a music fan with myalgic encephalomyelitis, who lives in Scotland, said in an email interview. “When you’re watching a live performance at the same time as everyone else, you have the same anticipation leading up to the event, and there’s a sense of community and inclusion, knowing that you’re watching the performance alongside however many other people.”More venues are providing programming specifically for people with disabilities and their families. Moments, at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, for example, is geared toward people with dementia and their caregivers. “Our main goal is that everyone has choice, everyone can get access to what they want in ways that work best for them,” Miranda Hoffner, the associate director of accessibility at Lincoln Center, said.Moments, at Lincoln Center, is geared toward people with dementia and their caregivers. Ayami Goto and Takumi Miyake, of American Ballet Theater’s Studio Company, danced.Lawrence SumulongThese types of programs have been welcomed. But others say that presenters must do more to make all of their programming accessible.“We need arts programs that are fully integrated,” Evans, the filmmaker, said.Even as presenters have cut back on streaming options, many have stopped requiring proof of vaccination and masks — placing new barriers to attendance for some of the estimated seven million American adults who have compromised immune systems that make them more likely to get severely ill from Covid-19.“It’s easy to feel just like you’re farther and farther behind and not only forgotten, but just completely disregarded,” said Han Olliver, a 26-year-old freelance artist and writer with multiple chronic illnesses who would like more access to the arts. “And that’s really lonely.”Still, new opportunities have led to more connections for and among disabled people.Theater Breaking Through Barriers, an Off Broadway company that promotes the inclusion of disabled actors onstage, has presented more than 75 short plays since 2020 that have been designed to be performed virtually. Last fall, it streamed a series of plays, including some that were created on Zoom and others that were performed in front of live audiences. Nicholas Viselli, the company’s artistic director, said the goal is to make streaming more regular.There is an idea that “‘doing virtual stuff is not really theater,’ and I don’t agree with that,” Viselli said.“It’s not the same as being in the room and feeling the energy from the audience and the actors,” he said, “but it is when you have artists creating something in front of your eyes.”Gathro continues to take advantage of streaming options when she can from her home in West Springfield. But she hopes that more presenters will stream their work in the future.“I wish I always had options for livestreaming, for really everything, because I would,” Gathro said. “For me, it’s worth paying as much as I would pay to see it in person. The accessibility is just that much more helpful.” More

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      ‘The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die’ Review: Flesh Wounds

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      Soldiers face off over the fate of England in this overbearingly glib costume drama.Far too often, “The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die,” an incomprehensible period epic based on the five-season television series “The Last Kingdom,” mistakes the mere presence of blood for a compelling narrative.Set during the 10th century, before England was a united kingdom, the movie, directed by Ed Bazalgette, takes place as the recent death of King Edward and the ascent of his son Aethelstan (Harry Gilby) threaten a fragile peace among the country’s Pagan and Christian nation states. The loyal Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Alexander Dreymon), a man of deep honor, wants to avoid a conflict that he thinks will continue for generations.What occurs is a series of events rather than a story. If you haven’t watched the TV show, itself adapted from novels by the author Bernard Cornwell, then keeping up with the web of allegiances, characters and story lines will prove difficult. In this film alone, Uhtred’s sword is stolen, his land and title are stripped away, and a conniving Danish king, Anlaf (Pekka Strang), seeks to exploit him. Ingilmundr, the lover and Svengali of Aethelstan, also wants to turn the impressionable ruler against Uhtred.The theme of Christian guilt in the face of homophobia bears no dramatic fruit. The film’s culminating battle isn’t much heartier: The compositions lack clarity, the score of undulating voices is comically clichéd and the visual effects are a dingy, nauseating mess. There are no stakes in a film that not only takes seven royal lives — it snatches several brain cells with them.The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must DieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Passion’ Review: Friends Fall Apart

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      Belatedly making its U.S. debut, a 2008 film from Ryusuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”) offers new insights into his abiding themes and sensibilities.The director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest film to premiere in U.S. theaters, “Passion,” is also one of his oldest — a confident if uneven new piece of 15-year-old context for one of cinema’s most acclaimed contemporary auteurs, whose “Drive My Car” last year earned the Oscar for best international feature.Never before released in the United States, “Passion” (2008) is Hamaguchi’s second feature, his student thesis from his time in Tokyo film school. (His first was a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s art-house landmark “Solaris”; no one can accuse Hamaguchi of lacking ambition.) Like certain influential early career films that preceded it — Barry Levinson’s “Diner,” Lawrence Kasdan’s “The Big Chill” — “Passion” has a low-fi, hangout feel, flush with the youthful indie energy and forgivable pretensions of an artist who believes that filmmaking matters. Hamaguchi is still a student but already finding his voice.The plot is likewise loose, literary: A group of young academics and professionals reunite to discover their lives are growing apart. When Kaho (Aoba Kawai, heartbreaking) and Tomoya (Ryuta Okamoto) announce their engagement, the group’s many internal love affairs, past and present — a love hexagon, give or take a side — begin to roil their little group’s surface cohesion.In “Passion” we see marks of the artistic sensibilities and preoccupations that characterize Hamaguchi’s later films like “Car” and “Asako I & II” (2018): the intimate close-ups; the philosophical musings; the unbiased compositions; the themes of betrayal, compromise and need. We also see shared flaws: the indulgent run-time, the occasional overwriting and lapses in tone. I’ll take those minor flaws in exchange for what, in hindsight, signaled the emergence of a serious artist.PassionNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Hilma’ Review: An Artist With Spirit

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      The film gets off to a rough start, but the director wins the audience back with his sincere connection to the artist Hilma af Klint.Before production started on his guilelessly charming biopic “Hilma,” about the mystical artist Hilma af Klint, the Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallstrom insisted on a séance to meet his subject. The painter, who died in 1944, believed that spirits guided her to create symbols which, when mounted together, would illustrate an energy map of the universe.In her lifetime, af Klint was seen as a kook — and her occult work was barely seen at all. Before she died, she stipulated that her paintings remain hidden for another two decades. Though she was painting abstract canvases before Wassily Kandinsky or Piet Mondrian, af Klint’s eye-popping color combinations didn’t emerge until the moment Mary Quant could have slapped them on a minidress.“Hilma” likewise gets off to a rough start. Hallstrom’s script is inked in simplistic lines. It’s a humorless caricature of period-piece conventions, complete with heavy-handed depictions of sexism — “That girl, she paints — paints!” The classic telltale cough of doom arrives courtesy of her younger sister Hermina (Emmi Tjernstrom), whose death kick-starts the artist’s fixation on the great beyond.Yet, Hallstrom wins the audience back with his sincere connection to af Klint, played in her bullheaded youth by his daughter, Tora Hallstrom, and in her muttering years by his wife, Lena Olin. He and the cinematographer Ragna Jorming challenge themselves to see through af Klint’s eyes, animating her overpowering images of spirals and lines until they swirl around her body. Some visual experiments work, like lingering shots of a raspberry’s geometry or a flayed horse’s veins. Others are merely odd, like when he intermittently manipulates footage to look like an early silent film.What emerges is a softly supernatural story about a futurist who behaved as selfishly as any retrograde male genius. The narrative thrust comes from af Klint’s insensitivity toward her fellow female artists in the theosophic collective, The Five, particularly her lover and patron, Anna Cassel (Catherine Chalk). Hallstrom credits that insight to his beyond-the-grave conversation with af Klimt. Believe him or not, the emotions onscreen have true power.HilmaNot rated. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘Rare Objects’ Review: A Woman Under the Influence

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      Actors are given a long and generous leash in this sometimes compelling, sometimes tepid drama about mental illness from Katie Holmes.For long stretches of its two-hour running time, “Rare Objects,” a story of recovery and addiction based on Kathleen Tessaro’s novel of the same name, is a heavy, somewhat slow-moving drama that seems perhaps better suited to the stage.Julia Mayorga stars as Benita, a young woman recently discharged from a mental institution, who is slowly and carefully putting her life back together, one day and one paycheck at a time. She talks at length about her life with her loving but critical mother (Saundra Santiago); gets a low-paying but honest job at an esteemed antique dealer, where she receives compassionate treatment from the owners, Peter (Alan Cumming) and Ben (Derek Luke); and makes fast friends with Diana (Katie Holmes), an incredibly wealthy heiress whom she met at the hospital.“Rare Objects” proceeds sluggishly, and a bit ponderously, as characters take on a staid air and say things that mean little but sound deep, like, “Some people need to be seen before they can hear.” Holmes is a generous but indiscriminate director of actors: She has the tendency, not uncommon among actors turned directors, of extending a cast of inconsistent talent a degree of latitude better reserved for the heaviest hitters. (She doesn’t have this problem with her own performance, which is both compelling and well-situated in the context of the film.)At times, the style of the movie gets in the way of the simple effects of the drama — a couple of pointlessly showy long takes add nothing and are a distraction — while a few baffling creative decisions threaten to spoil the good elsewhere. Cumming has a particularly moving scene in which he grieves the anniversary of the death of a lover over a boozy dinner — a scene very nearly ruined by the inexplicable choice to surround him with multiple empty martini glasses, something no restaurant on earth would do.Rare ObjectsRated R for strong language and mature themes. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Suzume’ Review: Gods, Spells and Instagram Posts

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      Makoto Shinkai’s latest animated film, about a girl who accidentally unleashes chaos over Japan, is at once mythical and thoroughly modern.Makoto Shinkai is often praised as a descendant of the great Hayao Miyazaki for his masterly animation, and his latest film, “Suzume,” is no exception. The film speaks the same cinematic language, employing an ethereal, emotive color palette that enlivens every splash of water and blade of grass.You can spot Miyazaki’s influence in more than just the visuals. There are familiar symbols and themes: The portal doors, the cursed male hero and a few narrative moves in the resolution all scream Miyazaki’s “Howl’s Moving Castle,” while the exploration of memory and grief mirrors his “Spirited Away.”I’ll stop the Miyazaki comparisons there because Shinkai showcases plenty of his own narrative and directorial signatures in “Suzume.” He’s created a thoroughly modern world of both old and new forms of magic, of spells and old gods and of Instagram posts and texts. Like a locomotive chugging uphill, the story’s stakes are quickly raised to the scale of natural disasters and mythical phenomena, while Shinkai puts an emphasis on specific towns and regions in Japan, grounding us in the real world even as he whisks us away to other worlds.What’s particularly exciting in “Suzume” is the story’s start. Seventeen-year-old Suzume wakes up from an otherworldly dream and heads off to school. On the way, she encounters and tries to follow a mysterious stranger named Souta but ends up in the ruins of an old resort, where she stumbles upon a free-standing door floating in a shallow bank of water. She opens it, and soon flaring wind, flying debris and massive red tendrils reach out and consume the darkening skies of Japan. This is only 10 minutes in. Shinkai doesn’t give you a chance to gauge your interest in its story; he immerses you immediately in the movie’s mythos and spells so that you have no choice but to offer your attention.At the ruins, Suzume finds out she has unwittingly released a cute but troublesome cat-god that Souta calls the keystone, which caused the door to unleash a monstrous earthquake-causing beast beneath Japan. Souta is a “closer,” someone who finds and shuts doors to prevent such destruction — but the keystone has transformed him into a sentient three-legged chair to prevent him from completing his mission. Suzume must then help Souta in an odyssey across Japan, making new friends while the two race to stop a catastrophic equivalent to the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake.It’s not just the drama that works. Shinkai delivers hilarious physical comedy in the awkward gambols and leaps of Souta the three-legged chair — a refreshing reversal of the trope of the handsome young love interest who leads the naïve girl on a journey. Shinkai is nothing if not a sentimental director, but here, instead of making the flirtation between Suzume and Souta the film’s emotional crux, thankfully he focuses in on the relationship between Suzume and her mother, a nurse who died in the aftermath of an earthquake when Suzume was 4.Though the film does work as a metaphor about growth and loss, it never elaborates the rules of its world, which detracts from the narrative. The film, like Shinkai’s last, “Weathering With You,” can’t decide if it wants to be an outright climate change parable or just a fictional story that references real climate disasters. Inspired by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, “Suzume” doesn’t fully square its mythology with those real environmental tragedies — or with humanity’s accountability in the inevitable monstrous acts of the natural world — and what this all means for the film’s plot and resolution. Unclear character motivations and murky magical logistics raise more questions than provide answers.Which is what makes “Suzume” a fascinating, frustrating film. It doesn’t fulfill the promise it made in that truly stellar first act: to launch us into an adventure that crosses regions and planes but lands us steady back on our feet.SuzumeRated PG. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Human Flowers of Flesh’ Review: The Life Aquatic

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      This contribution to slow cinema observes the quiet routines of a captain and her crew as they sail a small boat across the Mediterranean.Anyone who (like me) savors the aquatic sequences in “Avatar: The Way of Water” but tires of its action and visual effects might find an intriguing art-house substitute in “Human Flowers of Flesh.” The serene feature, directed by the German filmmaker Helena Wittmann and largely shot on 16-millimeter film, is about as far as one can get from a blockbuster, but it shares with “Avatar” a love of seafaring, a reverence for briny blue hues and an inclination to surrender to the quiet grandeur of nature.The film unfolds as a series of cinematic seascapes captured onboard a boat sailing from Marseille toward Algeria. The captain, Ida (Angeliki Papoulia), and her crew are seldom shown speaking. Instead, they laze about on the sun-baked planks, read books and poetry, play board games or contemplate the horizon as waves rock the ship. Traversing sea and shore, the characters seem most comfortable near and on the water, and Wittmann follows their lead, rarely letting the Mediterranean leave ear- or eyeshot.There is little story beyond the snatches of conversation we receive, but “Human Flowers of Flesh” brims with visual and aural detail from the rocky coasts and gurgling reefs. Because of the scarcity of dialogue, the film’s few lines acquire outsize importance and can sometimes feel overwrought, as when a crew member reads aloud about wanderers who find comfort in the world’s smallness. Better to let the ocean water do the talking — it could babble for hours.Human Flowers of FleshNot rated. In English, French, Portuguese, Tamazight and Serbo-Croatian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More