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      ‘Night Raiders’ Review: A Future That Resembles the Past

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      A mother joins a group of vigilantes to help free her daughter from a state-run academy in this feature from Danis Goulet.“Night Raiders” imagines a dystopian world where Indigenous people have been displaced from their land and ghettoized in reserves, while their children are forcibly enrolled in residential schools that brainwash them into forgetting their language and culture. That these are aspects of the actual history of Indigenous communities in North America, and not merely futuristic fictions, is the ingenious and damning conceit of Danis Goulet’s debut feature.“Night Raiders” follows Niska (Elle-Maija Tailfeathers), who’s managed to keep her 11-year-old daughter, Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart), close to her by living hidden in the woods. When a series of accidents forces them into the city — a squalid slum where packets of food are airdropped to impoverished residents — Niska is forced to give up an injured Waseese to the state. But soon, a torn-up Niska stumbles upon a Cree vigilante community that’s been waiting for a prophesied “guardian” to arrive and help free their children.Goulet’s sleek, lo-fi world-building — decrepit gray cityscapes; fields covered with smoke-spewing factories — is more compelling than her storytelling, which grows increasingly predictable as Niska and the vigilantes plan a raid on Waseese’s academy. Yet the film’s use of clichés can also be thrillingly subversive at times, reminding us of the ways in which genre-movie templates borrow from the history of colonization but obscure the plight of its real victims. A final showdown between the Cree fighters and SWAT-style soldiers recalls westerns, though the stakes are reversed here: The colonizers are not the heroes, but the bad guys.Night RaidersNot rated. In Cree and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘They Say Nothing Stays the Same’ Review: Crossing a Modern River

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      Two events disturb the placid surfaces of a boatman’s world: the building of a nearby bridge, and his discovery of a young woman floating in the water.Directed by the actor Joe Odagiri, “They Say Nothing Stays the Same” is a postcard-pretty film about a boatman in Meiji-era Japan. For years, Toichi (Akira Emoto) has ferried people back and forth on a river amid unspoiled beauty. A large part of the film’s appeal comes from that natural splendor and the lives Toichi glimpses while making one trip after another.Two events disturb the placid surfaces of Toichi’s world: the construction of a nearby bridge, and his discovery of a young woman (Ririka Kawashima) floating in the water. One development underlines Toichi’s haplessness, the other his decency, when the woman turns out to be alive and in need of care. Otherwise, the movie floats along pleasantly enough for much of its 137 minutes, with nice period detail, such as a scene with a colorful band of troubadours.But monotony sets in, beyond Toichi’s routine. Too often Odagiri can’t resist adding one more shot to a montage, or one more vignette. He doesn’t quite reduce Toichi to being a noble mascot for the film’s nostalgic setting (shot by Christopher Doyle), but anyone to do with the bridge (or modernity in general) tends to be portrayed as vulgar or destructive.The landscape can go only so far in expressing Toichi’s mind-set, and the movie turns hokey when it dramatizes Toichi’s inner thoughts: a repeated voice-over of insults that torment him, for example, or two hectic sequences that resemble something out of a zombie movie. When he finally, awkwardly, voices his insecurities at length, his particular twist on humility defies expectations but comes too late.They Say Nothing Stays the SameNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 17 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas, and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Uppercase Print’ Review: Between the Lines

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      Radu Jude’s rousing, form-bending new feature rails at the power of propaganda to suffocate people’s freedoms.“Uppercase Print” opens with a fragment of a quote from the philosopher Michel Foucault: “the resonance I feel when I happen to encounter these small lives reduced to ashes in the few sentences that struck them down.” The film, a rousing, form-bending new feature by the Romanian auteur Radu Jude, rails at the tyrannical potential of language — particularly when backed by government power — to suffocate people’s freedoms.The movie braids together two accounts of life under the dictatorial regime of Nicolae Ceausescu: a filmed play about the 1981 investigation of a teenager who graffitied slogans about democracy and workers’ rights in the city of Botosani; and advertisements, educational programs and newsreel footage from state-sanctioned Romanian television of the same era.A queasy sense of party-line artifice haunts both the theatrical performance and the TV footage, which the film’s archival opening telegraphs strikingly. Three well-dressed presenters praise Ceausescu’s Romania enthusiastically, until a teleprompter malfunction renders them awkward and speechless. Without its scripted cues, they have no idea what to say.The play, originally written for the stage in 2013 by Gianina Carbunariu, repurposes text from the files of Romania’s Communist-era secret police. Actors read these lines with deadpan intonation, making vivid the dehumanizing effects of bureaucratic jargon. “Reforming the objective” is a dry euphemism for the repression of dissidents; “youth protection” is code for surveillance.Jude’s genius lies in his ability to turn these words against themselves — to render them absurd through canny juxtapositions of text and image, documentary and fiction. And if the film draws on the past, it’s as a warning for the present: A closing exchange about Ceausescu-era phone-tapping slyly references Cambridge Analytica.Uppercase PrintNot rated. In Romanian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Love Is Love Is Love’ Review:Aging Too Gracefully

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      The characters in this idle drama, directed by Eleanor Coppola, seem mostly content. That’s the problem.One of the great comforts in life is the assurance that misery can be interesting. Contentment doesn’t necessarily provide onlookers (or audiences) with the pleasure of great gossip, drama or insight, and the characters in the idle drama “Love Is Love Is Love,” directed by Eleanor Coppola, mostly seem like content, happy people.The film is a collection of three largely unrelated short stories, which are each marked with their own title cards. First there is “Two For Dinner,” in which a filmmaker (Chris Messina) who is on location in Montana meets his wife (Joanne Whalley) for a remote date over video chat. In “Sailing Lesson,” Kathy Baker and Marshall Bell play a long-married couple who rekindle the fantasy of romance by playacting as the kind of people who might set sail for a daytime tryst.The final short story in this modest collection is “Late Lunch,” which is also the longest sequence of the film. In it, Caroline (Maya Kazan) holds a dinner in remembrance of her late mother, attended by all of her mother’s nearest and dearest friends.Coppola, 85, focuses her camera on characters as they reminisce in long monologues, which are clearly relished by the film’s accomplished cast, including dinner guests Cybill Shepherd, Rosanna Arquette and Rita Wilson. The tone and pace of the movie corresponds to these sedentary conversations among people who acknowledge their age, and who have had time to find peace.But the cumulative effect of so much enlightened sitting around is that the movie doesn’t move. There is a lack of action, both visually and emotionally. The characters are never unseated by a revelation. When they speak, it feels like they have waited their turn.Love Is Love Is LoveNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘7 Prisoners’ Review: Survival at Any Cost

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      Alexandre Moratto plunges into the psychological traumas of human trafficking in this gripping Brazilian drama on Netflix.Deep into “7 Prisoners,” the protagonist stares up at the labyrinthine electrical cables of the transformers that power the city of São Paulo. He is Mateus (Christian Malheiros), a human trafficking victim from the Brazilian countryside. He works in a filthy junkyard for long hours without pay, stripping cables for the copper that helps these very towers run. A wave of wounded anguish percolates under Mateus’s eyes, as his boss, Mr. Luca (Rodrigo Santoro) says, “Your work powers the whole city.” The camera shifts to electric train lines next to slums and the glittering skyline of the city lit up at night. Mateus’s exploitation is so profound, an entire metropolis vibrates with complicity.It is moments like these that reveal the strengths of Alexandre Moratto’s social thriller “7 Prisoners”: Rather than being a simple examination of a social problem, the film excels at excavating the deep-rooted, sprawling violence that affects everyone living under hierarchies of power.Mateus arrives in São Paulo with a few others from his village, in search of a better life. But they quickly realize they are cogs in a trickle-down machine of exploitation that includes Mr. Luca, the police and politicians.Santoro and Malheiros deliver excellent performances, their initially sparse interactions and facial contortions raising the stakes at every turn. At first, Mateus and the crew battle to escape, but Mateus soon realizes that obedience and collusion with Luca may be the only path to freedom. That sense of moral ambiguity propels this gripping drama, plunging us into the psychic depths of the traumas that accompany survival.7 PrisonersRated R for language and violence. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Belfast’ Review: A Boy’s Life

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      In this charming memoir, Kenneth Branagh recalls his childhood in Northern Ireland through a rose-tinted lens.Romanticism reigns in “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s cinematic memoir of his childhood in a turbulent Northern Ireland. From the lustrous, mainly black-and-white photography to the cozy camaraderie of its working-class setting, the movie softens edges and hearts alike. The family at its center might have health issues, money worries and an outdoor toilet, but this is no Ken Loach-style deprivation: In these streets, grit and glamour stroll hand-in-hand.So when Ma (Catríona Balfe) sits in her doorway to peel potatoes for dinner, what we notice is the soft afternoon light dancing on her luminous skin and brunette curls. And when Pa (Jamie Dornan), square of jaw and shoulder, strides toward home after a spell working in England, the camera shoots him like a returning hero. Which, of course, he is, at least to his younger son, Buddy (a wonderful Jude Hill), a smart, cheery 9-year-old and a fictional version of Branagh himself.Viewed largely through Buddy’s eyes, “Belfast,” which opens in August, 1969 (after a brief, colorful montage of the present-day city), is about the destruction of an idyll. Mere minutes into the film, a hail of Molotov cocktails ignites the friendly neighborhood where Catholics and Protestants live amicably side-by-side. A swirling camera conveys Buddy’s confusion and terror; yet, even as the barricades go up and the local bully-boy (Colin Morgan) tries to draw Buddy’s Protestant family into his campaign to “cleanse the community” of its Catholic residents, the movie refuses to get bogged down in militancy.Instead, we watch Buddy play ball with his cousins; moon over a pretty classmate; watch “Star Trek” and Westerns on television; and spend time with his loving grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds). Drawing from his own experiences, Branagh crafts nostalgic, sentimental scenes suffused with some of Van Morrison’s warmest songs. Family visits to movies like “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (1968) add wonder and fantasy to Buddy’s life and a clue to his future career. They also offer an escape from a conflict he doesn’t understand and his director refuses to elucidate. Snippets of television news play in the background, but the growing Troubles that would tear the country apart are not the story that Branagh (whose family moved to England when he was nine) wants to tell.So while “Belfast” is, in one sense, a deeply personal coming-of-age tale, it’s also a more universal story of displacement and detachment, located most powerfully in Balfe’s fierce, shining performance. Her authenticity steadies the heartbeat of a film whose cuteness can sometimes grate, and whose telescoped view offers little sense of life beyond Buddy’s block. Branagh’s remembrances may be idealized, but with “Belfast” he has written a charming, rose-tinted thank-you note to the city that sparked his dreams and the parents whose sacrifices helped them come true.BelfastRated PG-13 for loud bangs and angry bullies. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Home Sweet Home Alone’ Review: A Winter With Plenty of Falls

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      Dan Mazer’s film, streaming on Disney+, is a painful spiritual sequel to the 1990 hit.Burglars roasting on an open fire. Adults taking a pool ball to the nose. So go the Christmas caterwauls of Dan Mazer’s “Home Sweet Home Alone,” a painful spiritual sequel to the 1990 hit that made a meme of the child star Macaulay Culkin. Culkin’s Kevin McCallister does not appear, though his older brother Buzz (Devin Ratray) cameos to mention that the scamp has matured into a security alarm impresario.Apt timing as now two homes are in peril: the Mercers, who, because of a rideshare mix-up, have jetted to Tokyo sans Max (Archie Yates), their 10-year-old son with a mouth like Don Rickles; and the McKenzies (Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney), who suspect Max of stealing an heirloom they need to pay off their mortgage.This leveling of the moral stakes reveals that Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell’s script is aimed at nostalgists, not children. It’s hard to imagine any grade schooler chuckling at a runner about the proliferation of alt-milks at the grocery store, even with the desperately whimsical woodwind score. And when the darts (and kettlebells and fishing lures) start flying, it’s the grown-ups who learn a lesson about the meaning of family. Max’s emotional revelation happens mysteriously offscreen midway through the film, minutes after he dresses like Scarface and inhales whipped cream.Who’s the real victim here? The audience — yet Kemper’s no-nonsense pixie who suffers a dozen thumbtacks to the face runs a close second.Home Sweet Home AloneRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ Review: Fetch Me if You Can

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      The beloved cartoon dog gets the live-action treatment in this generic canine caper.These are chaotic times for C.G.I. animals. Digital artisans replaced dog trainers on “Cruella.” The 2019 film version of “The Lion King” did its best impression of a David Attenborough documentary. And when early images from “Sonic the Hedgehog” were coldly received, the creators chose to delay release to refine the movie’s effects.The beloved canine at the heart of “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” directed by Walt Becker, is the most recent addition to this photorealistic litter, and like Sonic’s before him, Clifford’s appearance is jarring. Gone are his floppy Vizsla ears, his sad bloodhound eyes. Here, Clifford resembles a jolting golden retriever dyed vermilion red, and his looming cartoon height translates to a manageable 10 feet — just short enough to squeeze through the brownstone doorways of his new home in Manhattan.Rescued from the streets by a magic animal shelter, Clifford soon meets Emily Elizabeth (Darby Camp), a precocious middle schooler under the temporary care of her ne’er-do-well uncle Casey (Jack Whitehall). From here, the story veers into a generic caper, stacked with evil villains, kindly allies and mischief. Genuine sweetness can be found in Emily’s fidelity to her rowdy new best friend. Still, naturalism is hard to fake, and it’s difficult to divorce Clifford from the lines of code that animate him; indeed, when Clifford yipped loudly onscreen, my very real dog, lying beside me, didn’t even stir.Clifford the Big Red DogRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and on Paramount+. More