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      ‘Huesera: The Bone Woman’ Review: What to Dread When You’re Expecting

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      In Michelle Garza Cervera’s terrifying and transfixing debut feature, a pregnant woman battles visions of a demoness who threatens her body and mind.Ever since I saw “Huesera: The Bone Woman,” the captivating horror film from the Mexican director Michelle Garza Cervera, at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, I haven’t been able to shake its images from my mind. Both a quintessential horror crowd-pleaser and an exceptionally specific deconstruction of the trials of pregnancy, the film offers a portrait of Valeria (Natalia Solián), a furniture maker in Mexico City, as she transitions into a life of domesticity.The story begins as Valeria, accompanied by her mother and aunt, ascends a staircase toward a towering golden statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe to appeal for a child with her husband, Raúl (Alfonso Dosal). Her prayers are soon answered, and the couple begins a long stretch of medical appointments and home refashioning as they anticipate the baby’s arrival.For our protagonist, the new chapter also presents some strife. Her sister sneers at Valeria’s lack of maternal instincts. Raúl is reluctant to have sex for fear of harming the fetus. And Valeria must give up her vocation to convert her workshop into the infant’s room. Power tools and baby-proofing don’t exactly mix.But even graver threats are approaching. Soon into the pregnancy, Valeria envisions a bony demoness who creeps in the darkness and scurries away the moment Valeria attempts to alert others to her presence. Whether the tormentor is an evil spirit or a prenatal hallucination is beside the point; no matter her form, we recognize that she is a menace to Valeria’s mental, physical and spiritual well-being.Valeria finds solace from the dread with a former girlfriend who awakens memories of her onetime nonconformist lifestyle — in the film’s only flashback, we see the pair as teens running from the police while chanting, “I don’t like domestication!” — and their renewed bond reinforces for Valeria the sense that motherhood is as much about loss as it is about gain.In her first feature, Garza Cervera admirably wields all of cinema’s tools to assemble her story: The sound design, heavy on snaps and cracks, is sharply anxious, and the cinematography makes moody use of mirrors, shadows and color. Dialogue is employed economically, and in the film’s most majestic set piece, speaking halts altogether in favor of careful rhythms of editing and chilling group choreography. “Huesera” is the type of staggering supernatural nightmare that is as transfixing as it is terrifying.Huesera: The Bone WomanNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      What an ’80s Feeling: ‘Flashdance' Turns 40

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      The film helped bring breaking into the mainstream. Over the years, it also became famous for the subs and doubles of its star, Jennifer Beals.At the climax of a strip routine, a young woman in silhouette arches back across a chair and pulls a cord. A cascade of water drenches her flexed body.In a leotard and leg warmers, the same woman stretches and runs in place, her wet hair flinging moisture as she shakes and rolls her head.Still in the leotard and leg warmers, she faces a panel of judges at an audition— jog-skipping while pumping her arms high, turning and turning, diving into a somersault, spinning her on back.These and other moments from the 1983 movie “Flashdance” still circulate in cultural memory, loved and mocked and recognized, even by people who never saw the film. On Monday, in honor of its 40th anniversary, New Yorkers get a rare chance to watch it on a big screen, as the closing selection of this year’s Dance on Camera Festival at Film at Lincoln Center. Get ready to cheer or jeer.Jennifer Beals, the star of “Flashdance,” in the off-the-shoulder sweatshirt she made famous.Everett Collection“So many people hold it in a special place,” Michael Trusnovec, a curator of the festival, said, noting how the movie’s style permeated the Long Island dance studios that he grew up in. He also pointed to how “Flashdance” had affected fashion: the sweatshirts with the neck hole cut to fall off one shoulder. And he stressed how dancers, including those inspired by the brief appearance of B-boys, had gravitated to the movie, thinking: “That’s what I want to do. I want to be that.”Beyond dance, much of the movie’s staying power comes from the soundtrack, especially Michael Sembello’s “Maniac” and Giorgio Moroder’s “What a Feeling,” sung by Irene Cara. The songs support sequences that are essentially music videos, which is how those scenes (the jogging workout, the audition) became ubiquitous on MTV — and why they still circulate online. Cara’s voice connects “Flashdance” to “Fame,” the 1980 movie with her hit title song, just as the supporting actress Cynthia Rhodes connects it to “Dirty Dancing,” from 1987. It’s an ’80s dance-film node.Beals in the movie’s freak-out scene.Paramount Pictures, via Getty ImagesThere’s some fondness for the plot, too. Set in Pittsburgh, it’s a follow-your-dreams story and a Cinderella tale. Alex — Jennifer Beals in the role that made her a star — is a welder by day and dances in a burlesque club at night (occasioning not just the famous water-drenched number but also a freak-out in white Kabuki makeup amid strobe lights). Her dream is to be accepted into a prestigious dance conservatory. By the end, she gets in, and she gets the guy, her older boss at the steel mill.Over the years, the film has acquired a kind of notoriety, too, because Beals did so little of Alex’s dancing. Most was performed by a French dancer, Marine Jahan. And in the climactic audition scene, there were more doubles: the gymnast Sharon Shapiro for the dive into the roll; and for the backspin, the 16-year-old B-boy Richard Colon, better known as Crazy Legs.Richard Colon, better known as Crazy Legs, doubling for Beals.Paramount Pictures, via Getty ImagesInitially, Colon said in an interview, he was brought in to teach the other doubles — on the day before shooting. That wasn’t enough time, so the director, Adrian Lyne, asked him to perform the backspin himself, in a leotard and wig, after shaving his legs and his newly grown mustache.“I was this little arrogant Puerto Rican from the Bronx with all this machismo,” Colon said. “I put my hands up to Lyne’s face and rubbed my fingers together, like, ‘You gotta pay me.’”They paid enough, Colon said. And in the next decades, the residual checks “definitely came in handy,” he added, as did his joke about being the first in hip-hop to dress in drag.Colon was known to the filmmakers because he was already in the movie. He and a few other members of the pioneering B-boy group Rock Steady Crew appear in another scene, when Alex discovers them dancing with a boombox on the sidewalk.To the B-boy anthem “It’s Just Begun” by the Jimmy Castor Bunch, Normski pops and locks like a windup robot, Ken Swift and Crazy Legs spin on their backs and Mr. Freeze holds an umbrella while doing the backslide, just before Michael Jackson made that decades-old move famous as the Moonwalk. This one-minute sequence had an outsized impact.“It’s impossible to overestimate the significance of ‘Flashdance’ in the history of breaking,” said Joseph Schloss, the author of “Foundation: B-boys, B-girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York.” “That one scene pretty much single-handedly brought breaking into the mainstream.”Some members of Rock Steady were at first hesitant to be in the movie. “We didn’t practice with other groups,” Colon said, “because it was all about the element of surprise.” Marc Lemberger, better known as Mr. Freeze, said he was afraid that other dancers would “bite our moves”— steal them.A scene from “Flashdance.”Parmount PicturesAfter the movie’s release, the crew “became instant ghetto celebrities,” Colon said. “There was lots of love and lots of jealousy.” They got on the David Letterman show and into “Beat Street,” one of a few breaking-themed movies that came out the next year. “Flashdance” is connected to that part of the ’80s, too.The Hollywood interest was a quick fad, but breaking lived on. For decades, Colon said, he would meet people who sneaked into “Flashdance” just to see that one scene, people who saw themselves in the dance, many of them far from the Bronx.“When you talk to people in different hip-hop dance scenes around the world,” Schloss said, “almost inevitably they will say, ‘Well, the first time we saw it was in ‘Flashdance.’”In “Planet B-boy,” a 2008 documentary focused on the international B-boy competition Battle of the Year, dancers from Japan, Germany and France all testify to that effect. (And where did the director of the film, Benson Lee, get idea for the documentary? From rewatching “Flashdance” and wondering what had happened to the form.)The ripples from the scene can also be felt in “Top Nine,” a new documentary getting its world premiere at Dance on Camera just before “Flashdance.” It’s about the Russian B-boy crew Top 9, formed around 20 years ago.Its members tell their story of banding together, improving their skills and gaining global respect for Russian B-boys. They win Battle of Year in 2008, beating a dominant Korean crew. That glory doesn’t solve their money problems — this isn’t a “Flashdance” fairy tale — but they keep dancing.Through it all, they don’t mention “Flashdance,” but listen to the song they use to win in 2008: “It’s Just Begun.” And when some of them start a festival in St. Petersburg, which masters do they import? Ken Swift and Crazy Legs. More

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      ‘Sweetheart’ Review: A Seaside Crush

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      In this British coming-of-age film, a young lesbian stumbles through some important firsts.AJ, the moody protagonist of the British coming-of-age film “Sweetheart,” exudes an angst that is recognizable to any person who has lived through adolescence.When she is dragged by her mother, Tina (Jo Hartley), to a family vacation at a seaside trailer resort, AJ (Nell Barlow) initially stews in frustration. She’s not charmed by nights spent watching the resort’s resident magician. And her usual wardrobe, consisting mostly of baggy sweaters, doesn’t suit the sunny weather — much to her mother’s delight.But if “Sweetheart” shows its share of evergreen teenage turmoil, the writer and director Marley Morrison also cannily observes details that feel specific to young people today. AJ is tortured by the lack of Wi-Fi. She signals her defiance not with a leather jacket or tattoos, but by wearing sunglasses and a bucket hat everywhere. AJ is concerned about the environment, and she’s just as likely to argue with her mother about methane emissions as she is about appropriate beachwear. Most crucial to the plot, when the film opens, AJ has already come out to her family as a lesbian, though she lacks romantic experience.On vacation, AJ’s boredom quickly dissipates when she meets Isla (Ella-Rae Smith), a local lifeguard, at the laundromat. Propelled by a desire to get to know this beautiful stranger, AJ stumbles forward through some important firsts for her life. She goes to parties, she smokes and drinks, and she begins to explore her sexuality.Morrison is less discerning in her depiction of Isla’s character, and at times Isla feels flat in comparison with AJ’s broad collection of quirks. But to the film’s credit, the central relationship remains realistically drawn — a teenage courtship that’s marked by misunderstandings and mood swings. The characters aren’t always sweet, but they never feel phony.SweetheartNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Somebody I Used to Know’ Review: Reigniting Old Flames

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      In Dave Franco’s new comedy, Alison Brie plays a reality television showrunner attempting to break up her ex-boyfriend’s engagement.In the catalog of comedies about city strivers who decamp to their suburban hometowns to hassle former lovers, Dave Franco’s “Somebody I Used to Know” is an upbeat but minor entry, destined to recede behind the worthier stories from which it borrows. The unfortunate irony of the movie’s title — one word off from the Gotye earworm, presumably to preserve search engine optimization, if not originality — is that the film lacks the indelible details and authentic feeling necessary to encode it in long-term memory. Indeed, soon after finishing the movie, it already feels far away.The story begins as Ally (Alison Brie), a reality television showrunner, craftily wrests a tearful disclosure from an interview subject on camera. It should be a triumphant moment, but the implication is that in her pursuit of Hollywood success, Ally has sold her soul and sacrificed her dignity. Not to worry: The chance for a reset arrives after the network declines to renew the show, and Ally, whose workaholism has left her friendless, makes the impromptu decision to visit her mother (a criminally underused Julie Hagerty) in Leavenworth, a small town situated in the mountains of Washington.This cinematic overture is among the most successful sequences in the movie, and sets us up for a conventional but comforting journey back to more wholesome roots. It also teases a gleefully unlikable protagonist who’s more schemer than achiever and more sourpuss than socialite; Brie (who co-wrote the script with Franco) has a knack for tapping into her nasty side, and as we zigzag through a handful of set pieces that don’t quite register comedically — one hinges on cat diarrhea — we yearn for our city mouse to go fully feral.Regrettably, the moment never arrives. While in Leavenworth, Ally bumps into her ex-boyfriend, Sean (Jay Ellis), and is aggrieved to learn of his recent engagement to Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons), a self-possessed local punk singer. Ally spends the remainder of the film’s running time batting eyelashes and crashing wedding events as she conspires to reignite their old flame. It’s remarkable that nobody tells her to get lost and get a life; despite some side-eyeing, even Cassidy and her protective pals seem glad to have the grating Ally around.As the movie’s co-writer and director, Franco brings a sunny disposition and a touch of idiosyncratic farce. There are the usual jaunty montage sequences and forlorn shots of characters gazing out windows, but there is also vomit, obscene texts and an overwhelming dose of public nudity. Franco and Brie are clearly riffing on a suite of movies about career women rediscovering roots and wreaking havoc on old relationships — “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Young Adult” come to mind — and seek to inject the familiar premise with millennial novelty.But there’s something missing from the equation. Each of those predecessors appreciate that their heroines, in acting harshly toward their peers, also become their villains. By reeling in Ally’s ruthlessness, expunging her comeuppance and mollifying those she wrongs, “Somebody I Used to Know” actually distances us from Ally and her issues. The truth is that jealousy and cruelty are human; anything less is just a portrait with the blemishes erased.Somebody I Used to KnowRated R for full-frontal nudity. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘Of an Age’ Review: A Boy’s Own (Coming Out) Story

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      In 1999 Melbourne, a teenage outsider meets a young man who’s smart, kind, sensitive and looks mighty fine in a tight black T-shirt.One of the trickier hurdles that romantic movies need to clear is convincing the viewer to swoon, too. That bar proves insurmountably high in “Of an Age,” a confident if unpersuasive story about a quintessentially alienated teenager falling for guy in his mid-20s who checks all the heartthrob boxes: He’s kind, good looking, has a nice smile and seems to like the attention directed at him. Yet why this object of desire, an ostensibly serious thinker en route to grad school, would fall for our charisma-challenged protagonist remains thoroughly mystifying.The writer-director Goran Stolevski made a modest splash at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival with his feature debut, “You Won’t Be Alone,” a silly witchy-woman horror movie set in 19th-century Macedonia that effectively flicks at your nerves without taxing your brain. For his new movie, Stolevski has shifted focus and swapped genres to create a low-key, intimate portrait of a young man’s awakening — sexual and otherwise — in Melbourne. It’s the summer of 1999 when Kol (Elias Anton), a Serbian immigrant a few weeks shy of 18, encounters Adam (a fine Thom Green), who over the course of a day upends the teen’s life.Overlong story short, they meet strainingly cute through Adam’s sister Ebony (Hattie Hook), who’s Kol’s dance partner and only apparent friend, though mostly just an off-putting script contrivance. Her role is to get the guys together, which she does in a protracted opener that settles down with Adam behind the wheel and Kol riding jumpy shotgun. They talk and talk. Adam not-so-casually shares that he’s gay and single, news that Kol receives with transparent anxiety and obvious interest. Later, they attend a party where a couple of girls are mean to Kol, who’s rescued by Adam. The guys hit the road again, and talk and talk some more.Stolevski, as his earlier work shows, knows his way around a camera. Working with the cinematographer Matthew Chuang (who also shot “You Won’t Be Alone”), Stolevski uses the physical confines of the car with intelligence, shrewdly marshaling its tight space to create a sense of claustrophobia that subtly shifts into intimacy as the men warm to each other. He also does nice work with the Australian light, in some sequences giving the visuals a blurry radiance that softens every hard edge, turns an ordinary cityscape into a jewel box and looks particularly lovely when bounced off Adam’s bare skin.It’s too bad then that, for all the bashful and gawking looks he employs playing Kol, Anton just doesn’t cut it as a timid, socially awkward adolescent outsider, a serious impediment to the movie’s fragile realism. The actor makes more sense in the role when the story jumps forward in time, bringing a now-strappingly adult Kol with it. The movie’s greater, intractable problem, though, is that Stolevski has burdened his characters with such obvious narrative instrumentality — Kol is the sensitive naïf while Adam is the appealing, gentle exemplar of an authentic life — that the two simply never come to life as people, either as individuals or as a couple. They say and do everything that they should, and also everything that you expect.Of an AgeRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Hannah Ha Ha’ Review: Making Ends Meet

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      The directors Jordan Tetewsky and Joshua Pikovsky offer a warm examination of what it means to do meaningful work in a world that undervalues it.The aimlessness of young adulthood is well-trodden ground in the world of indie cinema, but few movies offer the nuanced, lived-in portrayal seen in “Hannah Ha Ha.” The film follows the day-to-day life of Hannah (an illuminating Hannah Lee Thompson), a 25-year-old in small-town Massachusetts. She engages in odd jobs around the area, farming vegetables and teaching guitar lessons, while living with her aging father, Avram (Avram Tetewsky). Under the pressure of her rise-and-grind yuppie older brother, Paul (Roger Mancusi), who reminds her she’ll be booted off Dad’s health insurance on her impending 26th birthday, Hannah attempts to find herself a “real job,” first in the jargon-fueled tech world her brother occupies and then, after that fails, the service industry.Jordan Tetewsky and Joshua Pikovsky, the filmmaking duo who wrote and directed the movie, are natives of the semirural townships southwest of Boston, and their familiarity with the region and its people is what makes “Hannah Ha Ha” transcend — or, in many cases, take full advantage of — its shoestring budget. Like Hannah herself, the film views the world through a soft-focus lens. It lingers on scenes of friendship and community that have little to do with being on the clock: people at bonfires, in a mom-and-pop creamery, going on weekend bike rides through the woods. During a smoke break at her mind-numbing fast-food night shift, Hannah gazes across the parking lot and quietly observes the characters, mundane or not, who have chosen to pull their cars into the strip mall that evening.The past few years have led many to question their relationship to employment, and why being a kind and caring member of one’s community isn’t enough to make a living wage. As Hannah struggles to answer that question herself, she regularly listens to the voice of her uncle (Peter Cole), a radio D.J. who hosts a call-in show popular with local misanthropes. It’s unclear whether his listenership stretches much further than that. But to a chosen few, his work is essential.Hannah Ha HaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Attachment’ Review: Demon Lover

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      Mysterious behavior leads to an over-familiar reveal in this supernatural horror movie.Shacking up soon after meeting up could strain any relationship, but “Attachment” stirs in the extra spice of demonic possession. In Gabriel Bier Gislason’s compact supernatural story, Maja (Josephine Park) and Leah (Ellie Kendrick) move into Leah’s London flat not long after a meet-cute in a Danish library. Their sole neighbor is Leah’s mother, Chana (Sofie Grabol), whose extreme protectiveness lights a slow-burning fuse of dread.Leah suffers from strange seizures and fugue states, and Maja starts clashing with Chana, an Orthodox Jewish homemaker, over how best to take care of her. The mutual suspicion simmers as Maja hears creaks in the night and finds Chana’s habits peculiar, though a welcome streak of light humor lets the whole story keep a toe in rom-com waters. (By chance this film arrives shortly after a recent, creepier entry in dybbuk horror, “The Offering.”)When a neighborhood bookseller, Lev (a wry David Dencik), hints to Maja that something evil is afoot, a mystery develops as to whether Leah’s secretive mother has her daughter’s best interests in mind. But this buildup keeps us waiting for a reveal that then feels instantly familiar, despite nice subtle sinister touches in Kendrick’s performance.One could imagine another version of “Attachment” that identifies the nature of Leah’s situation early on, and then watches the couple cope with it. As it is, the ticktock horror plotting muffles the romantic spark that brought Maja and Leah together in the first place — the thrill replaced by a lukewarm chill.AttachmentNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More

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      ‘Consecration’ Review: Something Unholy

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      This unsatisfying horror film follows a woman’s search for clues after her brother’s mysterious death at a seaside convent.“Consecration,” a new horror film from the director Christopher Smith, begins with a cryptic declaration from its protagonist, Grace (Jena Malone): “My brother used to believe I had a guardian angel. And I used to believe in nothing. Now, I’m not so sure.” During this voice-over, an older nun saunters over and points a gun at the camera, which is to say, at Grace’s face.The film eventually gets to what prompts this toothlessly jarring shot, but the payoff isn’t particularly satisfying. Grace, an eye doctor, travels to the seaside convent where her brother, a priest, died. Her brother, a suspect in the murder of a fellow priest, is believed to have taken his own life, but Grace has her doubts. Suspicious of the nuns, stern traditionalists led by a dour mother superior, Grace begins looking for evidence of foul play. While she searches, she’s haunted by apparitions and visions of death, and the film often flashes back to her grim childhood in which the religious and the darkly supernatural were entwined.Yet the mythos of Grace’s past isn’t filled in thoughtfully or interestingly enough to buoy the present story’s mysteries and twists. The plot, as a result, can’t quite find its momentum; it doesn’t help that most of the film’s scares fall flat on a visual and technical level. Malone does what she can to keep it all afloat, and Danny Huston lends a bit of gravitas as Father Romero, a visiting priest who may or may not be there to help Grace. Either way, it’s not much of a thrill to find out.ConsecrationRated R. Bloody, violent content and some language. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More