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      ‘The Rose Maker’ Review: Purloined Blossoms for a Blue Lady

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      A boutique cultivator competing with industrial farms initiates a war of the roses in this gentle French comedy by Pierre Pinaud.The first flowers to grace the opening credits of this gentle French comedy are white roses in full bloom. Their petals are unblemished, and their milky hue seems luminous, a reminder that what appears to be white is a reflection of all colors. Horticulturists know it’s not easy to grow a perfect rose, and that principle will become the cornerstone of the plot in “The Rose Maker.” The film indicates its cinematic commitment with the perfection of these first roses — their almost shocking vibrancy complimented by a jovial Dean Martin tune. It’s easy for characters to say they grow such a flower, and another achievement entirely for filmmakers to find one to display onscreen.Narratively, these unparalleled blooms belong to Eve (Catherine Frot), a rose cultivator who has inherited her family’s prestigious farm. Yet despite Eve’s boutique care, industrial farms sell more roses and win more prizes, while Eve struggles to keep her small business afloat. Eve is prone to pessimism, but her faithful secretary, Véra (Olivia Côte), hires three pairs of helping hands to revitalize the farm. At first Eve protests, but soon she bonds with her amateur, even miscreant employees, enlisting them first in a heist to capture a rare rose, and then in the delicate efforts to grow fields descended from this stolen blossom.The director Pierre Pinaud doesn’t strain the high jinks for belly laughs, nor does he push for tears when it comes to forging the cross-class bonds between his characters. It’s a relaxed film, one that allows the audience to sit back and, if not smell the roses, then at least appreciate them. Just as they are for Eve, the flowers are this film’s raison d’être — a reminder that glimpsing beauty is reason enough.The Rose MakerNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Devil You Know’ Review: A Thriller Thinner Than Blood

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      This misbegotten family drama, starring a squandered all-Black ensemble, begins with stolen baseball cards.Recently released from prison, Marcus Cowans (Omar Epps), a recovering alcoholic, searches for a fresh start. He comes from a steadfast family, of four flatly sketched siblings, who worry about his well-being. But it’s his brother Drew (William Catlett), unemployed, alone, and hanging around a bad crowd, who’s concerning.Written and directed by Charles Murray, “The Devil You Know” is a grim crime and family drama that struggles to find a consistent tone. It begins with a jarring one-shot of three thieves infiltrating a quaint suburban home. Two occupants are murdered, another lies in a coma. At Drew’s apartment, Marcus discovers a book of valuable baseball cards, reportedly stolen from the vandalized home. Could his stoic brother be capable of the heinous violence that occurred at the house?Aimless and incoherent, the film maps the “no good deed” trope to Marcus. He tips off the police about Drew’s shady associates. The move causes Marcus’s devoted father (Glynn Turman) to suffer a heart attack and his loving girlfriend (Erica Tazel) to leave him. It also leads Joe (Michael Ealy), a tedious detective, to knock on his door.The soft-spoken Epps is frustratingly miscast. The editing by Geofrey Hildrew and Scott Pellet limps lifelessly along, and the direction lacks the necessary pulse for a story line with more twists than a low-budget soap opera. The film teases a confrontation between Marcus and Joe, climaxing with a meeting recalling Michael Mann’s “Heat.” But the oblique framing, undercutting the veteran actors, only reminds viewers of what “The Devil You Know” isn’t.The Devil You KnowRated R for violence and intense language. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Barbarians’ Review: Unexpected Visitors

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      In this new thriller set in the countryside, tension mounts between two men until a home invasion takes it to homicidal heights.The new thriller “Barbarians” might look familiar to those acquainted with the director Lars von Trier’s 2009 film, “Antichrist.” Both movies center on a wealthy couple in the countryside destined for violent encounters, as portended by a dying fox. But where “Antichrist” depicts a crisis of femininity, as a wife is overtaken by madness, “Barbarians,” in the directorial debut by Charles Dorfman, is all about masculinity.The couple in “Barbarians” is Eva (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and Adam (Iwan Rheon) — she a wildly successful sculptor and he a mediocre director. It is Adam’s birthday, and he must decide whether to commit to his girlfriend and buy a dreamy, rural estate with her. That choice becomes less clear-cut when his longtime frenemy, Lucas (Tom Cullen), a real estate developer who owns the house, arrives for dinner with his girlfriend, Chloe (Inès Spiridonov). Lucas appears to be everything Adam isn’t: swaggering, successful, tall. Tension between the two men mounts until a home invasion takes it to homicidal heights.I find the idea of a small man feeling emasculated by his thriving girlfriend tiresome enough in real life, and Dorfman, who also wrote the script, doesn’t manage to elevate it for the big screen. Aside from some cool aerial shots and an always excellent Cullen, there’s not much worth fussing about.Despite their biblical names, Adam and Eva learn little from their time in Eden. The film hinges on Adam’s ability to kill: He couldn’t put the fox out of its misery, but his stomach becomes stronger as he proves his masculinity through brute strength.“Antichrist” may have been chauvinistic in its own right, but at least was interesting to watch. “Barbarians” doesn’t provide much excitement at all.BarbariansNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Moonshot’ Review: Found in Space

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      Cole Sprouse and Lana Condor have a meet-cute en route to Mars in the young adult rom-com “Moonshot,” streaming on HBO Max.Christopher Winterbauer’s future-set “Moonshot” is built around a familiar, hard-to-resist premise, most often found in sitcoms but with roots in 1930s screwball comedies: a man and a woman who don’t get along must pretend to be romantically involved for the purpose of an elaborate ruse, the advancement of which gradually brings them closer together until they fall in love for real.The man is Walt (Cole Sprouse), a guileless, accident-prone barista who yearns to visit Mars, and the woman is Sophie (Lana Condor), an anxious Ph.D. candidate en route to Mars herself. When Walt stows away on Sophie’s space shuttle, he assumes the identity of her longtime boyfriend Calvin (Mason Gooding), and manages to embroil her in the deception. The trip to the red planet takes a month. Walt and Sophie have to spend it sharing quarters, keeping up amorous appearances, and (of course) exchanging the kind of witty banter and increasingly lustful glances that in a rom-com are the foundation of any budding relationship.The romance proceeds as it always does in these kinds of movies, with the interstellar setting accounting for little in the way of innovation. That’s OK. It’s a sturdy, versatile trope, no less appealing for being predictable, and with the right balance of flirty antagonism and latent sexual tension, the payoff is certainly satisfying. Sprouse and Condor’s fraught, teasing dynamic — Sprouse the bumbling doofus with rakish charisma, Condor the irritable perfectionist begrudgingly charmed by him — draws out their natural chemistry. Sprouse plays it a touch broad, veering sometimes from endearing to goofy. But Condor is note-perfect, and Winterbauer directs with a light, playful touch, giving the movie an energy that’s nimble and vibrantly sexy.MoonshotRated PG-13 for mild language and sexual innuendo. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More

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      A Filmmaker’s Journey to the Center of Celine Dion

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      In her kooky, rambunctious biopic “Aline,” the French comedian Valérie Lemercier drew from her own life to play the Quebecois pop star at every stage of hers.Valérie Lemercier’s new film is about an endearingly quirky, mega-famous Canadian belter. Her hits include “My Heart Will Go On” and “The Power of Love.” She was happily married to her much older manager.No, not Celine Dion, but Aline Dieu.“Aline,” which Lemercier directed and stars in, is kooky and heartfelt, loving and wonderfully bonkers — not unlike the superstar who inspired it in all but name. The movie scrupulously incorporates the major themes present in most traditional biopics — family, love, struggle, art — while slyly tweaking them. And a decisive step was switching from Celine to Aline.“I started with the real names,” Lemercier said in a video call from Paris in December. “But Brigitte Buc, my co-writer, told me, ‘Change them, it’ll be simpler.’ And it was true: It became easier, we could make up things.”Ahead of its American release on April 8, “Aline” has already earned accolades. The multihyphenate Lemercier, one of France’s most idiosyncratic artists for more than three decades, won the César Award for best actress in February; the movie, her sixth behind the camera, earned 10 nominations. “Artists publicly recommended the film, and that’s not common in France,” Lemercier said. “I got a lot of supportive messages from directors, as if they were saying I had earned the right to be in their club.”While the film starts with a disclaimer that it is “a work of fiction,” it uses Dion music (Lemercier lip-syncs excerpts from the Dion songbook performed by Victoria Sio) and is largely faithful to her story arc, from childhood in a hardscrabble Quebecois family to international stardom and, most importantly, to her passionate relationship with René Angélil, the music manager who discovered her when she was 12 and he was 38, and became her husband 14 years later.Still, “Aline” reflects distinct aesthetic and narrative choices, so much so that after the film’s presentation at the 2021 Cannes festival, Kyle Buchanan of The New York Times wrote that “it steers into its eccentricities so hard that it somehow boomerangs back into auteurism.”Among the many flourishes was the decision by Lemercier, 58, to play Aline at every stage in her life — including as a 5-year-old, with a little C.G.I. and forced-perspective tricks. This would not have surprised audiences in France, where “Aline” came out in November, because Lemercier, known for her biting comic style, has long portrayed children in TV sketches and in her one-woman performances; in one of her signatures sketches, she plays a twitchy contestant on a kids’ talent show. “Little girls, more than little boys, fascinate me — what they say, what they imagine, what goes on in their mind,” Lemercier said.“Aline” makes ample use of Celine Dion’s songbook, with Lemercier lip-syncing to the hits.Roadside Attractions and Samuel Goldwyn FilmsBut her choice to tackle young Celine herself was a moral, as well as artistic, one. Lemercier, as an adult, felt she was better equipped to handle potentially sensitive scenes, such as when the young Aline visits a dentist.“I’m often asked why I played her as a child, and I often say I’m like a lawyer defending her client: I’m not going to send out my assistant to handle the beginning, when it’s tough,” she said. “I don’t want to send out a kid to the dentist so she can open her mouth wide to display her crooked teeth. I heard unpleasant comments about my appearance when I was a child, so I wanted to be the one on the receiving end in the movie. I didn’t want to just play the sexy, glamorous woman we see at the end.”There are hints of autobiography throughout the film, particularly in young Aline’s drive to perform. Lemercier grew up in a farming family with three sisters and learned quickly that her clowning around could lighten her depressed mother’s mood. “When I made people laugh at a young age, even younger than five, I immediately felt that I existed, that I had a purpose, that I would not be useless,” Lemercier said. “For me, it’s the pleasure of making people laugh, and for her, it’s the pleasure of singing.”Born in Normandy, Lemercier moved to Paris at 18, and her career took off in the late 1980s thanks to cameos in the sketch series “Palace.” Her commercial breakthrough came in 1993 with the blockbuster “The Visitors,” which earned her a César for best supporting actress, and she made her feature debut as a director in 1997 with “Quadrille,” an archly stylish, beautifully art-directed adaptation of a Sacha Guitry play.It was through one of her solo outings, in the mid-1990s, that she was converted to the church of Celine. “I was doing a show at the Théâtre de Paris, and an usher, who was a Celine fan, sang me her songs,” Lemercier recalled. She decided to make a film about the star after spotting her at the funeral for Angélil, who died in 2016. “He wasn’t there anymore, and I wondered how she would cope. It touched me.”For French viewers, the film’s affectionate tone scrambled their notions of Lemercier and her style. Her humor can be quite dark, especially at the theater, and she gleefully exploits the jarring discrepancy between her elegant, poised appearance — she looked impeccably put together in our video chat — and crude, often scatological jokes. Her satirical barbs have not spared peers like Juliette Binoche, who was once the target of a biting fake commercial.“Everybody assumed I was going to make a parody, but that was never my plan,” Lemercier said of “Aline.” “I’m not much for tenderness; it really bugs me, generally speaking, and I tend to go more for sarcasm. But this time around — no,” she continued. “I wanted to be sincere, to do an open love letter.” (Some of Dion’s siblings have criticized the film for, among other things, what they felt was a cartoonish portrayal of their family. Early in the process, Lemercier passed on her script to Dion’s French manager, whom she said approved of the tone; a spokesperson stated in an email that “Celine has not seen the movie, nor does she have any comments about it.”)“There is no condescension, no snobbery in the film,” the musician Bertrand Burgalat, who produced Lemercier’s album, “Chante” (1996), and scored two of her movies, said by email. “She does not treat Celine Dion as a pop object, either, like Jeff Koons did with Cicciolina,” he added, referring to the provocateur artist’s relationship with his former wife and muse.If there were emotions in need of some untangling, they came more from Lemercier’s conflicted relationship with Quebec, where her first live appearance, in 1990, had turned into a debacle. “Air Canada had purchased all the seats for its employees, who thought they were going to see Claudine Mercier, a Quebecois imitator,” she said. “Everybody got up and left, and I ended the show in front of an empty room. I cried all night. I was wounded. So this movie was a way to return to Quebec with my head held high. Or at least to be better understood there.”Capturing the Quebecois culture was key to Lemercier, who extensively researched the province’s culture and mores and insisted on local casting. “I demanded — and it was not easy — Quebecois actors who are unknown in France,” she said. “I fought one of the film’s backers, who did not want to hear of them.” Among those actors was Sylvain Marcel, who played the Angélil character (renamed Guy-Claude Kamar) and thus had to help sell the romance between the singer and a man nearly 30 years her senior.“It’s very delicate, because the story revolves around their love,” the Quebecois journalist Denise Bombardier, who once shadowed Dion on tour for a 2009 book, said on the phone.For Marcel, who comes from the same Montreal suburb as Dion, everything flowed from a relatively straightforward motivation. “For me the idea was, ‘You love her, it’s crazy how much you love her,’ ” he said in a video conversation. “And that’s based on what René experienced with her.”The film does take liberties with some details of Dion’s life, but only to find a way into a psyche that, after almost 35 years in the limelight, remains somewhat opaque. “It’s about creating a Celine flavor, a flavor called Aline,” Lemercier said.The most prominent flight of fancy is an extended scene in which Aline walks the streets of Las Vegas, alone and forlorn. And yet for Bombardier, it reaches a greater truth. “It’s probably the most realistic scene in the entire movie,” she said. “She’s locked into her fame — it’s a loneliness we can’t comprehend. There’s a tragic dimension to this type of person, and that’s why I bow down to how perceptive this invented scene is.”Marcel goes even further: “It’s not a biopic, it’s a metaphor about a life that’s extraordinary but also nightmarish sometimes.”For Lemercier, that dark side is part of the equation, but only part. “I don’t talk about it, but when she plays golf for the first time, the balls get in the hole — she’s just a beginner, but it works,” she said. “It’s pleasant to play someone whose dreams come true.” More

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      Will Smith Refused to Leave Oscars After Slap, Academy Says

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      The academy revealed that Smith was asked to leave the ceremony after slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards, and said that it was initiating disciplinary proceedings.LOS ANGELES — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Wednesday that the actor Will Smith was asked to leave the Oscars ceremony after he slapped Chris Rock Sunday night onstage, but that the actor had refused to go.The admission came as part of a statement the academy released saying it had initiated disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith “for violations of the academy’s standards of conduct, including inappropriate physical contact, abusive or threatening behavior, and compromising the integrity of the academy.”The disciplinary process will take a few weeks to conclude, it said. Mr. Smith is being given at least 15 days’ notice of a vote regarding his violations and potential sanctions. He will be given the opportunity to be heard beforehand with a written response. The organization’s board of governors are scheduled to meet again April 18.The Altercation Between Will Smith and Chris RockThe Incident: The Oscars were derailed when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, who made a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.His Speech: Moments after the onstage altercation, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech.The Aftermath: Mr. Smith, who the academy said refused to leave following the incident, apologized to Mr. Rock the next day after the academy denounced his actions.A Triumph Tempered: Mr. Smith owned Serena and Venus Williams’s story in “King Richard.” Then he stole their moment at the Oscars.What Is Alopecia?: Ms. Smith’s hair loss condition played a major role in the incident.“Mr. Smith’s actions at the 94th Oscars were a deeply shocking, traumatic event to witness in-person and on television,” the academy said in a statement. “Mr. Rock, we apologize to you for what you experienced on our stage and thank you for your resilience in that moment. We also apologize to our nominees, guests and viewers for what transpired during what should have been a celebratory event.”The statement continued, “Things unfolded in a way we could not have anticipated. While we would like to clarify that Mr. Smith was asked to leave the ceremony and refused, we also recognize we could have handled the situation differently.”The two-and-a-half-hour meeting of the board of governors on Wednesday was described by two people who attended as “emotional,” as the governors conveyed the feelings of their constituents from their branches of the film industry. The feeling in the room, according to those who attended, was that it was their obligation “to not normalize violence,” said two governors who were granted anonymity to discuss a private meeting.On Sunday at the Academy Awards, Mr. Smith reacted to a joke Mr. Rock had made about his wife’s buzzed hair by leaving his seat in the audience and slapping the comedian across the face, then warning him — with expletives — not to speak about his wife, the actress Jada Pinkett Smith. (Ms. Pinkett Smith has alopecia, which causes hair loss and has led her to regularly buzz her hair.)Shortly afterward Mr. Smith won an Oscar for his lead performance in “King Richard,” a biopic in which he played the patriarch of the Williams tennis family. He used his speech to apologize to the academy and fellow nominees — but not to Mr. Rock. The next day, after the academy condemned his actions and opened an inquiry, Mr. Smith apologized to Mr. Rock in a public statement that said he had been “out of line.”The stunning onstage moment immediately set off a national debate over who was to blame and, in Hollywood, questions about why Mr. Smith faced no repercussions after striking a presenter on live television.Wanda Sykes, one of the hosts of Sunday’s telecast, said in a clip from an interview with Ellen DeGeneres that was shared Wednesday that the moment was “sickening” to her and that she thought Smith should have been escorted from the building instead of being allowed to stay and accept his Oscar.“I’m still a little traumatized by it,” Ms. Sykes said in the clip from an episode of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” that is scheduled to air next week. “For them to let him stay in that room and enjoy the rest of the show and accept his award — I was like, how gross is this? This is just the wrong message.”Nicole Sperling More

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      Bruce Willis Has Aphasia and Is ‘Stepping Away’ From His Career

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      The news of his diagnosis, initially announced by his ex-wife, Demi Moore, prompted an outpouring of support and appreciation for Willis from fans, stars and other notable figures.Bruce Willis, the prolific action-movie star, has been diagnosed with aphasia — a disorder that affects the brain’s language center and a person’s ability to understand or express speech — and will step away from acting, his ex-wife, Demi Moore, announced in an Instagram post on Wednesday.“To Bruce’s amazing supporters, as a family we wanted to share that our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” Moore’s post reads. “As a result of this and with much consideration Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.”“We are moving through this as a strong family unit, and wanted to bring his fans in because we know how much he means to you, as you do to him,” it continued. “As Bruce always says, ‘Live it up,’ and together we plan to do just that.”The post is signed “Emma, Demi, Rumer, Scout, Tallulah, Mabel & Evelyn” — referring to Emma Heming Willis, Willis’s wife, and his children. Moore is the mother of Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, and Heming Willis is mother to Mabel and Evelyn.The post was accompanied by a comical photo of a younger, smirking Willis wearing a bathrobe, sunglasses, a gold chain with a cross, and a towel around his head.His wife, and Rumer, Scout and Tallulah all posted the same message and image on their Instagram pages.Representatives for Willis did not respond to a request for comment.Willis, who turned 67 this month, is most famous for his role as the rough-around-the-edges, yet clever, New York City cop John McClane in the highly successful “Die Hard” movie series, made up of five films from 1988 to 2013.He has also starred in critically acclaimed films like “Pulp Fiction” (1994), “The Sixth Sense” (1999) and “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012).M. Night Shyamalan, the director of “The Sixth Sense,” has said that it was Willis’s admirably level performance in “Die Hard” that showed him that Willis could pull off the subdued child psychiatrist Malcolm Crowe in his horror-thriller, which would go on to be nominated for six Oscars, including best picture. And when Shyamalan wrote the screenplay for 2000’s “Unbreakable,” he said he did so with Willis in mind.In her New York Times review of “Pulp Fiction,” Janet Maslin said that Willis and his co-stars John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson “may all sound like known quantities, but none of them have ever had quite the opportunities this material offers.” Willis “displays a tough, agile energy when placed in the most mind-boggling situation,” she wrote.In 1997, during the last days of filming the action-thriller “Mercury Rising,” Willis told The New York Times that he was, in a way, surprised to have found success on the big screen. “When I was coming up, there were guys like Robert Redford and Paul Newman and Warren Beatty — those were movie stars,” he said. “It all got handed to me pretty quickly.” Just days later, he would begin working on the highest-grossing film of 1998, “Armageddon,” from the director Michael Bay.In 2013, when asked by GQ magazine to complete the sentence: “If I live long enough, I —,” Willis said: “should approach a bigger task than I approach now.”When asked if he has a motto, he said: “‘Live and let live’ is the closest I have. It works for pretty much everything. It has comic aspects to it and it has the real-deal aspects to it.”On Wednesday, there was an outpouring of appreciation for Willis and support for his family on social media from fans, stars and other notable figures.In response to Rumer Willis’s Instagram post, Sarah Paulson, who worked with Bruce Willis in “Glass,” Shyamalan’s 2019 sci-fi thriller, said: “He was such an incredible acting partner to me, and is the loveliest, most gentle & hilarious man. He reigns supreme in my book.” (In her Times review of “Glass,” Manohla Dargis wrote, “[Samuel L.] Jackson and especially Willis remind you again of how fine they can be when asked for more than booming shtick and smirk.”)In response to Moore’s Instagram post, Jamie Lee Curtis wrote: “Grace and guts! Love to you all!”; and Rita Wilson wrote: “My heart goes out to Bruce, and all of the family. So thankful you shared this with us. Keeping you all in our prayers.”On Twitter, Gabrielle Giffords, a gun control advocate and former congresswoman, wrote: “I’m thinking of Bruce Willis and his family today. Aphasia makes it hard for me to find the right words. It can be lonely and isolating.”The actor Seth Green tweeted, “I have so much love for Bruce Willis, and am grateful for every character he’s given us.”And the actor-director Kevin Smith wrote, “Long before any of the ‘Cop Out’ stuff, I was a big Bruce Willis fan — so this is really heartbreaking to read,” referring to his 2010 movie that Willis starred in. “He loved to act and sing and the loss of that has to be devastating for him,” Smith said. He said he felt badly about his “petty complaints from 2010.” In 2011, on the Marc Maron podcast, Smith had complained openly about working with Willis, saying that working with the action star was “soul crushing.”Thought of primarily as a movie star, Willis has received more accolades for his work on television: For his role as the private detective David Addison (played opposite Cybill Shepherd) in “Moonlighting” — an ABC comedy-drama-romance that ran from 1985 to 1989 — he earned three Golden Globe nominations, winning one, and two lead actor Emmy nominations, winning one.In a 1985 Times review of “Moonlighting,” John J. O’Connor wrote of Willis: “In repose, the actor is not your average leading-man type. He could easily be mistaken for the quiet guy down the street.”Confronted with Shepherd’s “flamboyantly insinuating” character, though, Willis “becomes almost debonair,” O’Connor wrote. “He appears to be constantly bemused, complete with twinkling eyes.”In 2000, Willis also won a guest actor in a comedy Emmy for his role as Paul Stevens, the father of Ross Geller’s much-younger girlfriend, on the NBC series “Friends.”Since 2015, his filmography has mostly been an onslaught of B-movie action productions, including “Breach,” in 2020, and “Fortress,” in 2021. According to his IMDb page, Willis currently has nearly 10 movies in postproduction. More

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      ‘The Square,’ ‘Sorry to Bother You’ and More Streaming Gems

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      This month’s offbeat streaming recommendations include several very dark satires, a handful of engaging indies, and two documentaries that cinephiles will adore.‘The Square’ (2017)Stream it on Hulu.The Swedish director Ruben Ostlund follows up his pointed social satire “Force Majeure” with this arch, uproarious and bitter attack on the pretensions of the art world. He adds a few famous faces to the mix (including Elisabeth Moss and Dominic West), but his biting voice has not been tempered — if anything, he cranks up the blatant discomfort and inescapable embarrassment. That doesn’t sound like much fun, granted, and at times it is not. Yet Ostlund’s refusal to soften (or redeem) his characters is admirable, and if you have the right kind of darkly comic sensibility, it’s a deeply funny piece of work.‘Sorry to Bother You’ (2018)Stream it on Netflix.The musician and activist Boots Riley makes his feature directing debut with this wildly funny, frequently bizarre mixture of Marxist dogma and Marx Brothers-style silliness. Lakeith Stanfield (later an Oscar nominee for “Judas and the Black Messiah”) stars as Cassius, a telemarketer who discovers the secret to success and must determine how nakedly to exploit it. That sounds like a fairly straightforward setup, but Riley approaches the material with the surrealistic eye of an experimental filmmaker, and ends up taking Cassius on a journey into the dark heart of extreme wealth and depravity. You may love it or you may hate it, but you’ve certainly never seen anything quite like it.‘God Bless America’ (2012)Stream it on Amazon.If “Sorry to Bother You” pushes the limits of comic satire, “God Bless America” blows them to smithereens — quite literally. The stand-up comedian and comic character actor Bobcat Goldthwait writes and directs this story of a suicidal middle-aged loser (Joel Murray) who teams up with a cynical teenager (Tara Lynne Barr) and goes on a killing spree, targeting sources of frustration from reality-TV stars to movie-theater talkers. Calling this a dark comedy is an understatement — this is pitch-black stuff, certain to alienate a large chunk of the viewing audience. But those who can tune into its wavelength will find a shockingly earnest (if take-no-prisoners) commentary on the toxic nastiness of contemporary culture.‘Identifying Features’ (2021)Stream it on HBO Max.The writer-director Fernanda Valadez makes her feature debut with this striking, patient and frequently wrenching drama of grief and helplessness. Mercedes Hernández stars as Magdalena, whose son Jesús (Juan Jesús Varela) left their home in Mexico, attempting to cross the border, and disappeared. Magdalena attempts to track him down, or determine what happened to him, encountering resistance, secrecy and even apathy along the way. Valadez is an extremely confident filmmaker, trusting her audience to follow the picture’s sad, mournful tone and loaded silences rather than laying out its themes in dramatic dialogue. And her eye is impeccable, particularly in the picture’s haunting, dreamlike concluding passages.‘The Glass Castle’ (2017)Stream it on Hulu.Between his critical breakthrough with “Short Term 12” and his commercial one with “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” Destin Daniel Cretton directed this emotionally forceful adaptation of Jeannette Walls’s best-selling memoir. Its main acting attraction is the “Short Term” breakout Brie Larson, but the most memorable performer is the perpetually undervalued Woody Harrelson, whose crackling turn as Larson’s wildly irresponsible father is an ace showcase for his particular charms and peculiar charisma. Max Greenfield (so delightful as Schmidt on “New Girl”) makes an effective counterpoint as Larson’s judgmental, yuppie boyfriend.‘Prince Avalanche’ (2013)Stream it on Amazon.The director David Gordon Green has tried a bit of everything in his career, from broad comedy (“Pineapple Express”) to slasher horror (the 2018 “Halloween”) to inspirational true stories (“Stronger”). But his specialty, from the beginning of his career, has been modest indie dramas like this one, which he builds as freewheeling showcases for terrific actors. This time, those actors are Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as two mismatched guys spending a summer doing country highway roadwork. Their dislike grows to grudging affection, of course; the story beats are not shocking. But Rudd and Hirsch give their characters life and agency, and Green’s easy-breezy style makes this a pleasing watch.‘Django & Django’ (2021)Stream it on Netflix.From the title and thumbnail art on Netflix, you might think this is some sort of bonus feature for Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” (also currently on Netflix). Some familiarity and affection for that 2012 film is helpful, but that’s merely an entry point for this documentary celebration of the Italian genre director Sergio Corbucci, who helmed the original 1966 “Django,” from which Tarantino drew his title and aesthetic inspiration. Tarantino dominates this entertaining and informative bio-doc, telling Corbucci’s story and sharing his readings of the filmmaker’s subtext (as well as a closing-credit fan theory about one of the film’s biggest questions). But the “Django” star Franco Nero and that film’s assistant director Ruggero Deodato (who would become a notorious filmmaker in his own right) also appear, to detail the making of Corbucci’s greatest films, and help clarify how his work helped change the Western genre forever.‘Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking’ (2021)Stream it on HBO Max.For once, the title isn’t just hyperbole, or an example of the framework we apparently have to attach to everything in popular culture — Oscar Micheaux was born in Metropolis, Ill., which has tried to claim itself as the home of Superman, a striking choice when the town is the real home of a cinematic groundbreaker. His is a truly American story, of a man born to modest means who became an author and filmmaker. That story is told here by historians, directors and cultural figures, breaking down the nuts and bolts of how Micheaux built a network of self-distribution within Black America, while analyzing several of his surviving works. “I wonder how many know him?” Morgan Freeman asks, early on; hopefully, thanks to this film, more will. More