The Order (Movie)

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    ‘The Order,’ ‘The Outrun’ and More Streaming Gems

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    A handful of last year’s best (yet overlooked) indies are among this month’s hidden treasures on your subscription streamers.‘The Order’ (2024)Stream it on Hulu.This tightly-wound mixture of political thriller and police procedural from the director Justin Kurzel was sadly lost in the shuffle of the year-end prestige pictures. It dramatizes the true story of the title organization, a more-extreme splinter group of the Aryan Nation that was linked to multiple crimes, motivated both by money and by hate, in the early 1980s, including the killing of the Denver talk radio host Alan Berg. Jude Law, working in the gruff, lived-in manner of a middle-aged Gene Hackman, stars as an F.B.I. agent who is tracking the Order’s activities, while Tye Sheridan as a local deputy, and Jurnee Smollett as an F.B.I. colleague, lend ample support. (Marc Maron also impresses in a brief but powerful turn as Berg.) And as Robert Jay Mathews, the leader of the Order, Nicholas Hoult deftly conveys the surface appeal of such a horrific figure — and the emptiness at his center.‘The Outrun’ (2024)Stream it on Netflix.You may think you’ve seen this story of a young woman, recently out of rehabilitation for drugs and alcohol, more than once before, and for good reason; the recovery narrative is certainly a durable one in contemporary memoir and fiction. But you haven’t seen this story brought to life by Saoirse Ronan. The staggeringly gifted Irish actress occupies every frame of the director Nora Fingscheidt’s adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir (Fingscheidt and Liptrot wrote the script), and she never fails to hold your attention. Even when the beats of her character’s journey are familiar, individual moments are so honestly inhabited, so vivid and electric, that they feel fresh. And the filmmakers impose a bracingly unconventional structure on the story, intercutting various phases of their protagonist’s fall and rise via stream-of-consciousness triggers and unexpected connections. Fingscheidt deploys vivid audio and visual depictions of how it looks and sounds (and therefore feels) to be inebriated, but ultimately, “The Outrun” isn’t about filmmaking flash. It’s the story of a woman’s journey to sanity and self-preservation, and it’s a richly rewarding one.‘Lost River’ (2015)Stream it on Max.Ryan Gosling narrates a sequence from his film “Lost River.”Warner Brothers PicturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      12 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

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      Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about.The dog days of motherhood.Amy Adams channels her feral side in “Nightbitch,” directed by Marielle Heller.Searchlight Pictures‘Nightbitch’Amy Adams stars as a stay-at-home mother who turns into a feral dog in this adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel directed by Marielle Heller.From our review:The movie doesn’t need to convince its target audience that there’s something gravely wrong with contemporary American motherhood. … Every thinking woman who watches “Nightbitch,” and a fair share of men, too, already know that score. Given this, it’s frustrating how eager to please the movie is.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickGoing out with a bang (and a song).Tilda Swinton in “The End.”Felix Dickinson/Neon‘The End’This musical directed by Joshua Oppenheimer follows a well-off family (led by Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton) in their lavish underground bunker as the world literally burns above them.From our review:“The End” is about one version of the end of the world, and about how the people who could have prevented it might feel when they get there. But to watch it is to think about yourself, at least if you have a conscience, and to ponder the sort of cognitive dissonance you live with every day.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickTwo sisters in a singular drama.Marianne Jean-Baptiste, left, and Michele Austin play polar-opposite sisters in “Hard Truths,” directed by Mike Leigh.Simon Mein/Thin Man Films Ltd, via Bleecker Street‘Hard Truths’The latest from the writer-director Mike Leigh centers on two sisters, Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Chantelle (Michele Austin), who have vastly different dispositions and outlooks on life.From our review:Leigh doesn’t put his characters on the couch or disgorge the traumas that are etched in every word and gesture. He doesn’t smooth any edges, express his views on race and class, nature and nurture, or float theories as to why Pansy seems so damaged while Chantelle shoulders life with grace. Instead, with deep feeling and lacerating and gentle words, Leigh creates a world that, like the vast, mysterious one hovering outside its frame, can seem agonizingly empty if you can’t see the people in it.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickRichard Gere and Jacob Elordi in confessional mode.Richard Gere in “Oh, Canada.”Kino LorberWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Order’ Review: Catch Him if You Can

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      The thriller, about a white supremacist (Nicholas Hoult) and the killing of a real-life radio host, among other crimes, hits familiar genre beats.After the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in 2021, observers noted the parallels between far-right organizations like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys and a group of violent extremists called the Order. The Order, which had splintered from the hate group Aryan Nations and aspired to wage a war against the federal government, was linked to multiple crimes that took place in the western United States throughout 1984, including armored-car robberies, a synagogue bombing and the killing of the Denver talk radio host Alan Berg.“The Order” presents a dramatized version of those events with an ear toward their contemporary echoes. Adapted from a book by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, who had been reporters for The Rocky Mountain News, the movie is directed by Justin Kurzel, an Australian whose output has shown a persistent, at times uneasy-making interest in real-life violence. In “The Snowtown Murders” (2012) and “Nitram” (2022), he sought to understand two cases of incomprehensible bloodshed in his home country by exploring them from the killers’ perspective.Some of that interest in psychology is evident in “The Order,” scripted by Zach Baylin, which devotes much of its screen time to Robert Jay Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), the Order’s leader. He is portrayed as a charismatic fanatic who, dangerously, can put on a soothing front when the occasion demands it. (One of the most suspenseful scenes finds him faux-gently grilling a newcomer who has squealed.) He is depicted as too extreme for the Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler (Victor Slezak), from whom he poaches followers, and has apparently charmed his way into playing family man to two women, his wife, Debbie (Alison Oliver) and Zillah, his pregnant mistress (Odessa Young).But perhaps knowing that a concentrated wallow in Mathews’s world and white-supremacist views would be utterly repellent, “The Order” mostly splits its perspective between him and a fictitious F.B.I. agent, Terry Husk (a pleasingly gruff Jude Law), whose presence brings the movie closer to a conventional police procedural. There is even the usual subplot about how Husk is running from a botched mob case back east and misses his family.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More