Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Donbass’ Review: War in Ukraine, the Prequel

      by

      Sergei Loznitsa’s film, completed in 2018, presents an absurd, horrific tableau of cruelty and corruption.Sergei Loznitsa’s “Donbass,” which opens in American theaters today, is not exactly a new film. It was an Oscar entry in 2019 after making its debut at the Cannes Film Festival the year before, and the events depicted onscreen — fictionalized recreations of things rumored to have really happened — take place a few years before that, in the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Eastern Ukraine.Watching it now, as reports of Russian atrocities in other parts of Ukraine dominate the headlines, is unnerving in a way that’s hard to put into words. The movie’s timeliness is obvious enough, and its prescience carries, at least for this viewer, a jolt of shame. The images of what was happening then provide a prologue to the horrors we are witnessing now — and amount to an unheeded warning.Could a wider audience for “Donbass” have made a difference before this year? Can it make a difference now? Probably not. Art isn’t a lever that moves history, but a lens that shapes perceptions of it. Certain narrative works, novels as well as films, provide illumination different from what might be found in journalism or history. Loznitsa’s nonfiction features, including the recent found-footage documentary “Babi Yar: Context” and the eyewitness chronicle “Maidan,” are to some extent explanatory, examining the causes and consequences of war and political upheaval.“Donbass,” at once brutally satirical and grimly compassionate, focuses on the subtleties and grotesqueries of human behavior. Loznitsa paints sprawling tableaus of cruelty, corruption, vulgarity and lies through a series of intimate vignettes.In an early scene, a government meeting is interrupted by an angry woman, flanked by cameras, who dumps a small tub of excrement on an official’s head. The raucous, profane free-for-all that ensues turns out to be a model of civil discourse compared to what comes later, but it also sounds what will be the film’s dominant notes.This is a place — identified as “Occupied Territory” in the flashes of text that introduce each scene and called “Novorossiya,” or New Russia, by some of the characters — where violence and absurdity commingle, where chaos is wrapped in bureaucratic punctilio and ceremonial pomp. (Loznitsa and his crew, including the brilliant Romanian cinematographer Oleg Mutu, shot the film in and around the central Ukrainian city of Krivoi Rog). There is a sly anarchy in Loznitsa’s methods: He wanders, with deceptive casualness, from episode to episode, leaving one story in the middle to follow a stray character into the next.Starting and ending in a television hair-and-makeup trailer, he takes us to a maternity hospital, a Ukrainian border checkpoint, various militia outposts, a crowded bomb shelter, a bus stop and a wedding. We meet a lot of people, often without catching their names, and observe interactions that range from ridiculous to infuriating to unspeakable. The mood is unstable. Amusement gives way to unease; disgust melts into dread, anxiety into despair. This is a tour of hell, and a reminder that hell is other people. The discomfort comes from the sense that we know these monsters. We are these monsters.“Donbass” isn’t easy to watch: A scene in which soldiers lead a prisoner into the street to be humiliated, harassed and then beaten by passers-by is particularly excruciating. But the movie bristles with caustic humor and moral rigor. The separatist fighters and pro-Russian citizens who dominate the action are held up for censure and ridicule, yet are also given a fair hearing when they paint their adversaries as fascists.Do they really believe it? When reality is distorted by authoritarian propaganda, cynicism can be impossible to distinguish from sincerity, and opportunism can masquerade as righteousness. That sounds abstract, but the movie’s bitter achievement is in its granular, ground-level concreteness. It’s horrific, impossible, extreme — and also understated.DonbassNot rated. In Russian, Ukrainian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’ Review: Keep Up! Bada-Brrring!

      by

      Jim Carrey’s reprised role as a villainous weirdo helps this fast-paced, family-friendly video-game-movie sequel maintain a refreshing silliness.Introduced by Sega at the start of the 1990s, the zippy blue hairball Sonic the Hedgehog is now officially over the hill and picking up speed onscreen. “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” is a fast-paced romp that’s silly, filled with quips and unabashedly for children — which is refreshing, coming at a time when so many other children’s franchises have succumbed to Sturm und Drang.This full-tilt sequel by the returning director Jeff Fowler and the screenwriters Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Whittington finds Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) struggling to relax with his adopted parents, Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tika Sumpter). Their small town is invaded by two animated extraterrestrials: Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), a flying fox who wants to make friends, and Knuckles (Idris Elba), a dog-like bruiser who wants to make mincemeat of anyone who gets between him and an all-powerful whiz-bang of a weapon called the Master Emerald.Things proceed as one might expect, but the road is littered with bits of lunacy that keep the audience on its toes. While the gags can be a hair too reliant on pop culture references — Limp Bizkit and Pantera? — the script has a rare affection for even small characters like Maddie’s quarrelsome sister (Natasha Rothwell), who gets to strut away with the most memorable fight scene.Still, there’s only so far sass can get you, and, as in the last movie, things would sputter to a halt without Jim Carrey’s performance as the fiendish Dr. Robotnik. Carrey may have created the best PG-movie villain in decades: a perfectly calibrated comedy machine whose preening, glowering and frustrated sputtering somehow still seem spur of the moment. Recently, Carrey suggested that he might retire from acting. If these films really do turn out to be Carrey’s goodbye, he is leaving Hollywood with a farewell gift: His built-for-the-big-screen exuberance might just hook this generation of kids on the joy of going to movie theaters.Sonic the Hedgehog 2Rated PG. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘All the Old Knives’ Review: Shooting Daggers Across the Table

      by

      In this thriller, Thandiwe Newton and Chris Pine work to out-smolder and outwit each other as old C.I.A. colleagues and former lovers catching up over dinner.Espionage thrillers usually traffic in globe-trotting mayhem, so in “All the Old Knives,” it’s refreshing to find one whose main ingredients are two stars out-smoldering each other over dinner.Chris Pine plays Henry, a C.I.A. operative. Thandiwe Newton plays Celia, a colleague who left the agency after their team in Vienna failed to resolve a flight hijacking that ended in mass fatalities. The present action is set eight years later. The head of their division (Laurence Fishburne) has learned that a mole may have fed information to the perpetrators. If it was Celia, Henry, her former lover, is ideally situated to catch her in a lie.So the two old flames meet in a water-view restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., to gab about how fresh the fish is, how good the bacon on Henry’s appetizer smells and whether Celia leaked secrets to international terrorists. Flashbacks show us who was where and when. And apart from a show-offy (apparent) single take that swans around the Vienna office introducing personnel, the director, Janus Metz, working from a screenplay by Olen Steinhauer (who also wrote the novel), mostly keeps things fast and easy, making everything look like a magazine spread.One downside of the small scale is that it only allows for a handful of suspects; the incriminating call Celia may have placed could just as easily have come from her boss (Jonathan Pryce, delivering infinitely subtle variations on how to act nervous in every scene). While “All the Old Knives” keeps cleverly resetting the table it’s laid out, it can’t fundamentally alter the meal.All the Old KnivesRated R. Sex, with a dash of Viennese sophistication. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters and on Amazon Prime Video. More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Metal Lords’ Review: Shred of the Class

      by

      Teenage boys battling angst and bullies form a heavy metal band in this genuine Netflix movie.In the charming coming-of-age movie “Metal Lords,” misfit teenage musicians form a band. Not just any band — a heavy metal band. These are kids who lag in gym class and get shoved into lockers, but in the privacy of their makeshift practice space, they sure know how to solo, riff and headbang.The movie (on Netflix) opens on a basement band practice. Posters of Motörhead, Black Sabbath and Slipknot line the walls, and a stack of amps is ready for use. In the middle of it all is our hero, Kevin (Jaeden Martell), who takes his cues — musical, social and otherwise — from his bestie, Hunter (Adrian Greensmith). Kevin’s on drums while Hunter assumes lead vocals, guitar and fantasies of stardom.Don’t you dare confuse them with a pop group. These boys are hardcore. Just take their band name: It starts with “skull” and ends with a word too obscene to use in their local Battle of the Bands. A metal fanatic and rabble-rouser, Hunter is hellbent on winning the music contest; Kevin is more intrigued by parties with the popular crowd and by his budding romance with a mercurial cellist named Emily (Isis Hainsworth, a magnetic newcomer).Written by D.B. Weiss (“Game of Thrones”) and directed by Peter Sollett (“Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”) — and with Tom Morello of the rock band Rage Against the Machine as executive music producer — the movie shows a keen awareness of how nerdy, shy or bullied children are drawn to metal music for its brute power and the high caliber of expertise it demands. Conventional but genuine, “Metal Lords” comprehends the riot of adolescent emotions and the many ways teenagers manage them.Metal LordsRated R for teen rage against the machine. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘As They Made Us’ Review: If the Apple Falls, Who Retrieves It?

      by

      A dutiful daughter navigates the consequences of her parents’ failings in Mayim Bialik’s engagingly compassionate directorial debut.,For her directorial debut, Mayim Bialik — the neuroscientist, sitcom star, and finalist for the “Jeopardy!” host gig — hewed to what she knew: reckoning with the legacy of volatile parents.At the start of her smartly observed, well-cast drama “As They Made Us,” a young Abigail and her brother, Nathan, listen from the back seat of a car while their parents downshift into a nasty argument. It’s clearly not a one-off. The youngsters appear in flashbacks illuminating the power of their parents’ undiagnosed mental illness to shape the adults they become — especially Abigail (Dianna Agron).Dustin Hoffman and Candice Bergen portray the parents as they were — when eruptions of violence and stubborn denial were routine — and as they are now. Eugene is suffering a degenerative condition that exacerbates confusion; Barbara, so uncomfortable with vulnerability, doubles down on control even as she leans on Abigail.Abigail has two children, has been divorced a year and is a columnist for a glossy magazine, The Modern Jew. She’s smart, overtaxed and a textbook dutiful daughter. Decades earlier, Nathan (Simon Helberg) high-tailed it and remains estranged.Bialik gets adroit work from the ensemble. Helberg brings moving nuance to Nathan’s sullen reckoning. Justin Chu Cary keeps Abigail’s love interest on the grown-up side of what could have been a too-good-to-be true character. Still, even with veterans like Hoffman and Bergen, it’s Agron’s film. She and Bialik make Abigail’s filial loyalty as sympathetic as it is exasperating, and as rife with difficult truths about aging as it is understatedly hopeful about growing up.As They Made UsRated R for abusive and explosive language. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Return to Space’ Review: Eyes on the Skies

      by

      Platitudes prevail in this overlong documentary about the partnership between NASA and SpaceX.Glowing with grandiose pronouncements and uplifting sentiment, “Return to Space,” a draggy documentary about America’s first manned spaceflight since 2011, could be easily repurposed as promotional material for Elon Musk’s SpaceX.This is in part because the company’s decades-long effort to design a reusable rocket is presented almost entirely in altruistic terms, the tests and failures cushioned by a cloud of for-all-mankind babble. NASA’s space shuttle program might have ended 11 years ago, but the need to blast our astronauts into the thermosphere (and onto the International Space Station) remains. Enter Musk, whose belief that humans will be a “multi-planet species” — and whose company was the only viable option — made him the perfect candidate for a $1.5 billion government contract to deliver rockets to NASA.While the filmmakers, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, struggle to wring drama from weather delays and anxious suits clustered around consoles, we hang out, pleasantly enough, with the two delighted astronauts (Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken) who will make the flight. Footage from multiple sources (including video diaries and NASA space cameras) is woven together with interviews containing more starry-eyed boosterism than compelling information.Aside from a few grumpy lawmakers, “Return to Space” is notable for its almost total lack of naysayers regarding this public-private collaboration. Ignoring the transactional in favor of the inspirational, the film pays no heed to SpaceX’s commercial endeavors — watching it, you’d think making money was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.“We made a point of humanizing Elon,” Chin says in the production notes. Yet the partnership’s uninvestigated details seem consequential, and skeptics might be forgiven their anxiety about what tech companies could get up to in outer space. We’ve seen what they’ve done on Earth.Return to SpaceNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Aline’ Review: Tale as Odd as Time

      by

      Celine Dion’s life story gets an unconventional telling from the French filmmaker Valérie Lemercier in this creative but flawed biopic.The best compliment one can give the French serio-comic filmmaker Valérie Lemercier’s “Aline,” a biopic of Celine Dion in which Lemercier plays a fictionalized version of the pop star from infancy through widowhood, is that it evokes the disorientation of discovering the singer as she was on her first album: a 13-year-old with snaggleteeth. The movie’s passion is incredible — but, boy, is it embodied in something awkward.There is barely time to adjust to the sight of the adult Lemercier shrunken through cinematic trickery to the size of a child before we’re forced to grapple with the dawning awareness that this tribute is intended to be heartfelt. “Aline” is no prank, even though the cinematography is as static as a Saturday Night Live skit. The director and her co-writer, Brigitte Buc, whisk through Dion’s timeline with efficiency. Lemercier observes the singer, here renamed Aline Dieu, as she shifts from ballads belted to her mother (Danielle Fichaud) to ones aimed at her Svengali and husband-to-be (Sylvain Marcel), who is sincerely presented as her one great love. Lemercier trots out Dion’s famous outfits and interviews, her 1998 Academy Awards performance of “My Heart Will Go On” and, when the action shifts to Dion’s Las Vegas residencies, does a quite good job imitating the star’s coltish, unpredictable dance moves.All “Aline” needs is a point. The closest thing to one is Lemercier’s insistence that Dion wasn’t simply a larger-than-life icon but a mortal, too, with relatable worries about her children, her sleep schedule and, er, getting lost in her 40-room mansion. To this end, in a film crammed with covers (splendidly sung by Victoria Sio), Lemercier opens and closes with “Ordinaire,” the Robert Charlebois song: “I am not a circus freak,” her star sings, adding, “I’d like to be understood.”AlineRated PG-13 for grace notes of sexual situations and language. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Review: The Director Lloyd Kaufman Returns With a Shakespeare Spoof

      by

      Kaufman, the king of lowbrow, is back with this lusty parody.Should you be among those lamenting the lack of whale feces and exploding genitalia coming to a theater near you, not to worry: Troma Entertainment hears your pain. And with “#ShakespearesShitstorm” — billed, I kid you not, as a musical adaptation of “The Tempest” — the durable director Lloyd Kaufman lobs multiple notions at the screen to see what sticks. In a movie held together with this many slimy fluids, pretty much everything does.A good-natured dig at addiction, Big Pharma and the judgmentalism of liberal elites, the movie follows the efforts of a wronged scientist (Kaufman) to exact revenge on the sleazy head of an avaricious drug company (Abraham Sparrow). A lucid plot, though, is surplus to requirements as we’re dragged into a debauched shipboard party (cue the flatulent whales) and an interminable crack house orgy, while Kaufman and company gleefully lampoon social-media warriors and cultural appropriation. Wiggling women and tumescent men bump up against a revolting spoof of the elevator scene from “The Shining” (1980), and an animated sequence from the talented Josh Stifter briefly raises the tone. Excrement and other forms of ejaculate spurt continuously, suggesting that this bona fide abomination was even more disgusting to act in than to watch.It’s all quite insane, if par for the course for Troma, which has been churning out these low-budget curios for close to 50 years now. As sitcoms are to TV and Pink Floyd is to vinyl, Kaufman’s film feels made for a more nostalgic medium and a more substance-enhanced viewing experience. Its makers, however, deserve praise simply for living up to that doozy of a title.#ShakespearesShitstormNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More