Subterms
These recent tales of dystopia and more will keep you pondering.Questions, questions: at their best, science-fiction films ponder and ask, then are so compelling that you forget you ever wanted an answer. This month’s selection will particularly reward viewers who have no patience for easy resolutions — or distinct genre classifications. More
In Simon Barrett’s film, something evil descends upon an all-girls boarding school after a clique of students try to contact the dead.When a group of mean girls invite Camille (Suki Waterhouse), the protagonist of “Seance,” to contact a dead classmate, she shrugs.“Why not?” Camille says. “Sounds weird.”That is essentially the thesis of this genre-confused film: Why not? Sounds weird.“Seance,” directed by Simon Barrett, takes place at the fictional Edelvine Academy, an all-girls boarding school where an evil presence emerges after a clique of students tries to summon a ghost. Newcomer Camille arrives just as girls are beginning to disappear.Given Barrett’s career as a horror screenwriter — he penned the twisty “You’re Next” and contributed to the “V/H/S” series — it’s no surprise that “Seance” is at its strongest when leaning fully into the humor of the genre. As the film reaches its lively end, bloodshed and absurdity both peak. Barrett livens things up with practical effects and fight choreography.Unfortunately, the film’s climax is at odds with its buildup, a plodding narrative constructed around flimsy characters with even flimsier motivations. “Seance” meanders for most of its running time, wavering between tones and styles. It’s both self-aware and overly serious. It tries to be a murder mystery, a slasher, a coming-of-age tale and a haunted house flick all at once.When the film does choose a genre, it occasionally sticks the landing, but “Seance” ultimately feels jumbled. Myriad bizarre choices — like costuming the teen characters in form-fitting pajamas and haphazardly inserting music into scenes — don’t help.Like its characters crafting a planchette out of lipstick and a phone case, “Seance” mashes ideas together and hopes for the best. But moments of true innovation can be found among the blunders.SeanceRated R for buckets of blood and un-ladylike language. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on FandangoNow, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More
This child’s-eye view of a family’s flight from Nazi Germany keeps the perils of the adult world at a determined remove.Painting a curiously cozy portrait of refugee life, Caroline Link’s “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” views displacement and the approaching Holocaust primarily through the experiences of a child, Anna Kemper (a captivating Riva Krymalowski). The result is a movie that’s almost as cuddly as the toy in its title.We meet 9-year-old Anna in Berlin in 1933, just before the Nazis come to power. Forced to flee to protect her father, Arthur (Oliver Masucci), a noted theater critic and prominent denouncer of Hitler, the family — including Anna’s older brother, Max (Marinus Hohmann), and their mother, Dorothea (Carla Juri) — relocates to the Swiss countryside. While the children grapple with a new language and unfamiliar customs, Arthur struggles to find work in a country he learns is experiencing an influx of Jewish intellectuals and is fearful of compromising its neutrality.A move to a meager Paris apartment only accelerates their diminishing circumstances. Yet, considering the horrors unfolding in Germany, the family’s problems feel staggeringly trivial. News that the Nazis have looted their home and burned their books, and that Arthur now has a price on his head, seems to arrive from another planet as the film focuses on Anna’s developing artistic talent. It’s difficult to sympathize with a family whose most pressing problems are a snippy French landlady (Anne Bennent) and the ability to afford private schooling for only one child. Indeed, Dorothea’s disdain for public schools (“They don’t even teach Latin there”) expresses a privilege that feels shockingly out of place.This soft-pedal, sentimental approach is clearly owed to Judith Kerr’s 1971 children’s novel, which Link and Anna Brüggemann have adapted without cracking much of a window onto the adult world. The family experiences some mild anti-Semitism, but the film carries no genuine sense of looming threat or the perils of their predicament. Much like Link’s 2003 feature, “Nowhere in Africa” — in which a wealthy Jewish family relocates to Kenya — the pace is lingering, the tone warm, the palette glossy and the mood determinedly optimistic. And as Anna moves from scribbling pictures of disasters to casting gloomy thoughts aside, the film strains to inject even a modicum of drama.“Good will always win,” Anna’s beloved godfather, Uncle Julius (a perfect Justus von Dohnányi), promises her before she leaves Berlin. That’s as accurate a summary of the movie’s message as any.When Hitler Stole Pink RabbitNot rated. In German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More
This small-town comedy from New Zealand looks at the romance between a country girl and a man accused of killing his family.Set in rural New Zealand, “This Town” wrings dark humor from an off-kilter premise: Sean (David White, also the writer/director), a young man accused of murdering his entire family and then let off on a technicality, falls in love with a naïve country girl, Casey (Alice May Connolly). Parodying the loose tongues and petty aspirations of kooky small-town types, White’s film borrows the mockumentary trappings of deadpan comedies like “The Office.” But beneath the movie’s wry exterior is a pungent darkness — a streak of real-life danger that’s more wince than cringe.Take, for instance, Sean’s obsession with guns. It’s one of the red flags that Pam (Robyn Malcolm), the cop who quit in rage when Sean was acquitted, has on the evidence board where she continues to gather proof of his possible guilt. Another one of Pam’s clues is Sean’s alleged drunken sexual assault of her nephew’s girlfriend. It doesn’t help that Sean is awkward and inscrutable. When he meets the guileless Casey on a dating app, and they hit it off over Chinese food and Pink “Munta” (a bastardization of Fanta), Casey’s friends and family are alarmed.As will be any viewer familiar with the realities of misogyny. The mystery of whether Sean is a misunderstood “good guy” or a sociopathic killer keeps “This Town” on a tightrope between twee comedy and “Dateline” drama, toying with the anxiety that gendered violence instills deep in many of us. Yet White squanders the opportunity for true satire, speeding past the many topical issues kicked up by the script — police corruption, mental health, gun crime — into a feel-good conclusion that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.This TownNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Topic. More
Zeshawn Ali’s documentary is a compelling portrait of a Black Muslim man in Newark who builds caskets and mentors two children.With depth of feeling and warm black-and-white photography, Zeshawn Ali’s humble documentary “Two Gods” fully acknowledges how death is a part of life.Ali brings a matter-of-fact compassion to the experiences of three different people: Hanif, a Black Muslim man in Newark, and the two boys he is mentoring, Furquan and Naz.Hanif builds caskets for a Muslim funeral home and joins their washing rituals for the dead. Lanky with a salt-and-pepper grizzle, heavy glasses, and a restless vibe, Hanif seems settled there after some years in the wilderness. He’s a pal to Furquan, a well-grounded 12-year-old, and a booster for Naz, a baby-faced 17-year-old who seems to be sliding into crime. Hanif worries over both — Furquan eventually moves in with relatives in North Carolina when his grandmother falls ill and mother deals with domestic abuse — while forging his own path and reconnecting with a son.Ali nimbly sketches their shifting fortunes and feelings, sensitive to the contours of the Black and Muslim experience, whether showing the importance of community or the precarious sense of not getting second chances. He cuts efficiently without turning anyone into a case study. The most touching moment might be when Hanif goes through a rough patch and gets the space to say that he just doesn’t know how to respond — he’s hurting and figuring it out. Furquan is also portrayed with respect, as he finds new pursuits in wrestling and churchgoing.A birthday cake gets cut at the beginning and ending of the movie. That celebratory image helps situate Hanif, Furquan and Naz’s lives in a hopeful cycle, working on healing, redemption and just plain living.Two GodsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More
Eric Bana stars as a cop visiting his hometown and getting embroiled in new murders and old traumas.Eric Bana has been away from movie screens for a minute, depriving them of his commanding frame and mounting concern. Appropriately enough, in “The Dry” he plays a Melbourne cop, Aaron Falk, who visits his evocatively dusty hometown years after fleeing tragedy. In Robert Connolly’s adaptation of Jane Harper’s crime best seller, Aaron gets embroiled in investigating new killings and old traumas.The gruesome murders of a high school friend and most of his family are what bring Aaron to town for the funeral service. But some still harbor grudges against him over the death of another friend from adolescence, Ellie (BeBe Bettencourt), who drowned under whitewashed circumstances years ago. Aaron’s former neighbors project their twinkly curiosity and simmering resentments about all this onto him.Lending a hand to a sheepish local cop (Keir O’Donnell), Aaron makes his gently firm rounds. The investigation is a tad leisurely, its momentum sapped by flashbacks to the drowning and related intrigue and puppy love. So the pleasure (as in countless TV crime shows) lies in fact-finding visits with friends and strangers: a very fond pal from the old gang, Gretchen (Genevieve O’Reilly), a rumpled principal (John Polson), a bumptious suspect (Matt Nable). Special mention: the local cop’s no-nonsense wife (Miranda Tapsell).The many red herrings and the dark-secret finale recall the reliable, compulsive appeal of a page-turner, although the tensions don’t always feel fully translated to the rhythms and demands of a film. But Bana might just be set to responsibly sort through more messy crimes: “The Dry” was only the first in Harper’s series of Aaron Falk stories.The DryRated R for murders, non-murder death, and understandably heated language. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More
This Romanian comedy takes an unpromising premise and turns it into a humble and humorous journey.Six million euros could change most people’s lives in significant ways. The down-on-his-luck Romanian mechanic Dinel (Dorian Boguta) could use the money to win his wife back from Italy, where he believes she is having an affair with her boss. With the encouragement of his gambling bud Sile (Dragos Bucur) and a small loan from his conspiracy theorist friend Pompiliu (Alexandru Papadopol), Dinel buys two lottery tickets. He plays the winning numbers and the three decide to split the proceeds.In the breezy “Two Lottery Tickets,” written and directed by Paul Negoescu (“A Month in Thailand”), victories are quickly deflated, allowing for amusing tangents into buddy, stoner and road trip comedy. Dinel soon realizes that the tickets were in his recently stolen bum bag. He and his friends go to the police station and stumble through a theft report, a cheeky commentary on the corruption and incompetence of the cops. (Negoescu ridicules law enforcement again later, in one of the film’s best scenes.) The friends then decide to take things into their own hands, by knocking on the doors of every resident in the building where Dinel was robbed, hoping for some answers about the mysterious muggers.
The film comes to life when the three friends start interrogating the colorful characters at the apartment complex, including fortune tellers, sex workers and a group of stoners — all ripe for hilarious vignettes driven by misunderstanding. Negoescu has adapted a short story by Ion Luca Caragiale from 1901, and the lottery ticket concept is not necessarily novel, but he gives the film fresh zest with droll observations and pitifully endearing characters — all while poking meta fun at the austere Romanian New Wave movement he works within, and works to dismantle.Two Lottery TicketsNot rated. In Romanian, with subtitles. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More
The Mexican director Michel Franco delivers a harsh film that doubles back on itself, inverting assumptions about the forces at play.The Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco frequently devises narrative puzzles that hinge on unusual and emotionally fraught moral and ethical dilemmas. They’re usually on an intimate scale, as in his 2016 medical drama “Chronic.” His latest film, “New Order,” which created a sensation at home and on the festival circuit, takes a contained approach to a big event: insurrection.An opening montage, featuring many shots that will recur throughout the narrative, is practically surreal, flashing images of destruction and splatters of green liquid. The movie settles in on a lavish Mexico City home where family and friends are celebrating the coming wedding of Marianne (Naian González Norvind). As she and her moneyed fiancé frolic with the guests, disturbances from the outside start oozing in.Soon the house is invaded by violent looters in face paint. The sight of what appear to be Indigenous people ripping the jewelry from the wealthy white guests plays out like Tucker Carlson’s worst nightmare. All this feels deeply, schematically reactionary on Franco’s part.But his ultimate vision, which reveals itself in a series of shocking story turns, is bleaker and more acidic than you may have guessed. Along the way, Marianne is kidnapped and subjected to prison depredations that recall the exploitation work of another Franco, the Spanish director, Jess. These and other scenes are meant to be hard to watch, and they are.The plot corkscrews into a parable of fascism via a “don’t let a crisis go to waste” philosophy. Franco practically dares the viewer to call his conclusion far-fetched. And for better or worse, the director’s dynamic filmmaking makes some of his projections stick.New OrderRated R for graphic violence, language. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More
