Author: jose

Sayre’s law says, “In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.” In “The Owners,” a film from the Czech Republic that takes place almost entirely at a meeting of a building’s co-op members, the intensity of feeling is always high, whether the topic at hand is as minor as if there needs to be a vote about who will take the notes or as literally fundamental as approval of critical maintenance of the building’s roof and pipes. Inside the co-op’s meeting room are scuffles, bigoted accusations, tears, and people who walk out in disgust or fury, all in a tone of the darkest satire, based on a play by the film’s writer/director, Jirí Havelka. 

Over the opening credits, we see a family hurrying to get ready. In contrast to the chaos in their apartment, the soundtrack features an elegant classical piece by Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka. Its title translates as “Under the Olive Tree of Peace and the Palm Tree of Virtue the Crown of Bohemia Splendidly Shines Before the Whole World: Melodrama.” That’s the only peace or virtue we’ll be getting in this film.

The chair of the meeting is Mrs. Zahrádková (Tereza Ramba), who is very organized and very determined, wearing a brightly colored sweater and little plastic barrettes in her hair that emphasize her youth compared to most of the other members of the homeowners’ association. She wants her husband, Mr. Zahrádka (Vojtech Kotek), to keep the minutes, but Mrs. Roubíčková (Klára Melíšková), acting as a combination parliamentarian/cop, insists on a vote to approve, even voting on whether there should be voting, with several layers of approval and verification for everything. Mrs. Zahrádková starts to lose patience because she is eager to get to her ambitious agenda. But the other attendees have other views if some seem unclear on the basic concepts. 

Mr. Švec (David Novotný) is the son of one of the owners, but his mother is in the hospital, so he is there to cast her votes. Mrs. Roubíčková insists on seeing his power of attorney. He passes her the paper. She notes that the only signature on it is his; what it needs is his mother’s authorization. He obligingly takes it back, scribbles on the paper, and hands it back. “Even if I closed my eyes and did not see you signing it for your mother,” she sniffs, “you cannot sign it ‘Mom.’” 

The snobbish Mrs. Procházková (Pavla Tomicová) is accompanied by her “representative,” Mr. Novák (Ondřej Malý). She does not live in her apartment; she rents it to six Ghanaian medical students. Mr. Nitranský (Andrej Polák) does not let the homophobic slurs from some of his neighbors interfere with his commitment to making urgently needed repairs to the building’s common areas. Mr. Kubát (Jiří Lábus) longs for the good old days of communism. Another attendee says nothing and just reads his book. And there are two sets of newcomers, a newlywed couple who are mostly silent and the affable Čermáks, fraternal twins (Kryštof Hádek, Stanislav Majer), who have just inherited the apartment from their father. 

As the conflicts move from the annoying to the existential, the one-room setting is appropriately depressing and claustrophobia-inducing. Anyone who has ever suffered through efforts to try to achieve consensus might want to consider this a trigger warning. Some of the film’s satire relies too heavily on repetition, with Mr. Kubát insisting that everything used to be better under the Soviets and Mr. Novák responding to every issue by handing out his business card, explaining that whatever the problem is, from plumbing to pets, he has a “small company” that can fix it. The cutaways that show the reality of the situations being debated are superfluous. 

But as the frustration of the group gets more intense and the issues get more controversial (and, unsurprisingly, expensive), it becomes clear that the film is making a larger point about the inability of governments, citizens, and human beings to overcome what Garrett Hardin called The Tragedy of the Commons: How do we find a way to do what is best for the group in the long term instead of what is best in the short term for us as individuals?  How do we care as much about the land, water, and air we all share as about our own homes? How do we act in time to prevent the collapse of our literal foundations? All we can do is hope we find a better way than this group.

Now playing in select theaters. 

At first blush, there are few unexpected notes to “Blue Beetle.” When a baddie says, “The love you feel for your family makes you weak,” you know the hero will prove that claim wrong. The villain, Victoria (Susan Sarandon), is hardly configured; it doesn’t take much guessing to know they’re a metaphor for the past and present ills of white-American imperialism. Love will prevail. Self-discovery will happen. And yet, “Blue Beetle” is surprisingly politically spry; the family-bound narrative is shockingly pure; its comedy swerves away from low-hanging memeification. Instead, the film cares more about how these characters mesh. 

While the Blue Beetle character dates back to 1939, the updated, culturally specific incarnation of Jaime Reyes didn’t grace DC pages until 2006. Since then, comic book movies have become the center of American pop culture. But those films have only recently attempted to touch every corner of human existence. Marvel Studios has, for instance, the “Black Panther” series and “Eternals,” Sony has the animated “Spider-Man,” while DCU has “Black Adam,” “Aquaman,” “Birds of Prey,” and, to a lesser extent, the “Justice League” film. While diverse, the DCU movies have mostly avoided locking characters into any sort of cultural specificity. “Blue Beetle” marks a sharp break from that unwritten edict. 

Directed by Ángel Manuel Soto (“Charm City Kings”), this heartwarming, crowd-pleasing comic book flick is less serious and more colorful than the tonally dour mood of many contemporary superhero films. 

A mountain of love falls fast when Jaime (an endearing Xolo Maridueña) arrives home from college to the fictional Palmera City; hugs, jokes, and genuine affection compose these early scenes. But all’s not well with the Reyes family: Jaime’s father, Alberto (Damián Alcázar), recently lost his auto shop business. Now, Jaime’s childhood home is in danger of being repossessed by Kord Industry. Despite his pre-law degree, Jaime struggles to land a job. He goes to work with his younger waggish sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo) as help at a resort. 

Much of “Blue Beetle” concerns the economic disparity between the haves and have-nots, particularly regarding imperialist powers. A person like Jaime can do all the right things: go to college, remain humble, and be pleasant—yet his background, a poor Mexican residing in the disadvantaged Edge Keys neighborhood, will always limit his future. However, he thinks he finds a lifeline when he steps in between the philanthropic Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine) and her ruthless aunt Victoria. Though Victoria fires him, Jenny offers him a job if he’ll meet with her the next day at Kord headquarters. 

From there, the script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer turns toward convenience to speed up the narrative: Jenny attempts to steal a technologically advanced blue scarab before Victoria uses its power to develop super-soldiers; Jenny puts it into Jaime’s unsuspecting hands to smuggle out; Jenny never checks back on the scarab—though she has Jaime’s number—until Jaime goes looking for her. It’s a jumble of nonsensical events that get us to Jaime becoming symbiotically linked with the scarab and getting a technologically sharp blue suit. 

Some light prep work follows: Jaime must learn how to use his new powers, sparks of romance kick up, origin stories spring forth—you know, the usual comic book beats. These are arguably the weakest components of “Blue Beetle,” particularly because they’re so inarticulately composed. Whatever doom Victoria provides doesn’t jump off the page, rather, the ever-capable Sarandon adds smart beats and nuanced quirks to raise this baseline villain above the mundane. Victoria’s grunting, stoic henchman, Conrad (Raoul Max Trujillo), goes much of the film as a bruising, immovable obstacle until Dunnet-Alcocer crams an entire backstory in the narrative’s final ten minutes. Jenny and Jaime also lack chemistry, partially because Marquezine can’t help but overact as she turns up every facial expression to their breaking point. 

Those shortcomings, however, do not negate what works in “Blue Beetle.” For one, the script and actors mine culturally specific references to the superhero parody series “El Chapulín Colorado” and the telenovela “María Mercedes,” keeping scenes alive and fresh (a Vicks Vapor Rub joke left me doubled-over laughing). Its political invocations, such as an allusion to the School of the Americas (a major topic to cover in a big-budget film) and a harrowing scene of a raid upon the Reyes home, while overwrought in its use of slow motion, humanizes endangered emigrant families, are daring subplots to add. 

Though the action sequences are unremarkable, they still carry some vigor because of this infectiously entertaining ensemble: Adriana Barraza (“Babel”) is a walking, talking highlight reel of punchlines, and George Lopez as the conspiracy theorist Uncle Rudy displays a tremendous elasticity, pulling out animated pratfalls and hilarious one-liners with ease. 

At the beginning of “Blue Beetle,” you know the line “The love you feel for your family makes you weak” will ultimately be proven wrong through some narrative device. Soto’s superhero flick, however, also makes family the film’s strength for an enriching time at the movies. “Blue Beetle” might not break the mold, but it does break expectations.   

In theaters Friday, August 18th.

“Telemarketers” deserves your time for being that rare bird of documentaries: a filmmaker’s personal story captured over many years (in this case, 22), fueled by the need to get a bizarre experience on camera. The footage can be molded into a narrative later. Years before he was a documentarian, Sam Lipman-Stern recorded his time working for a New Jersey telemarketing agency in the late 2000s, sitting in a cubicle with a headset, raising money for shady charities and the employer who pocketed most of the funds, known then as Civic Development Group. 

Lipman-Stern’s footage, and the new interviews here with co-workers that are like a class reunion, keep the story’s view eye-to-eye and nonjudgmental, which is essential. “Telemarketers” is all lived-in experience from a world you probably didn’t imagine was on the other end of the line. With material that only someone in Lipman-Stern’s chair could capture, the three-episode Max docuseries puts scammers into full humanizing color, whisking us to a messed-up-but-functional Oz for hustling scumbags who needed a job. The term “scumbags” is used with love in this saga. 

As the former employees who speak here tell it, every day was a new adventure in their workplace, and every other person was a drug dealer. CDG used to recruit from halfway homes, and they’d hire ex-convicts who only needed to be able to read scripts and use rebuttals. It didn’t matter if the place became unsafe or too raucous; it was just about hitting quotas. Lipman-Stern has plenty of footage of himself on the line, lying to people who think they’re giving to charity; there’s also clips of co-workers drinking, showing their butts, or doing drugs. We glimpse this greasy gold in the excellent first episode, an introduction to a batch of memorable faces and names (“Mr. Smythe”). They’re all so charismatic and wonderfully weird that you could almost forget they were helping their employers steal.

The telemarketers say they were at the “bottom of society,” but they’re wrong: they weren’t as low as those behind the scams enacted by CDG and copycat companies who used the same scripts and tactics. The calls would be made in the name of charities (for veterans, cancer patients, families of police, etc.), and the money would rarely go where it was originally stated. But companies like CDG were only acting as a third party. A larger scam arises in the middle of “Telemarketers,” but it’s best revealed within the story, to most feel the whiplash of irony and jaw-dropping greed.

Since he first put CDG antics videos on YouTube, Lipman-Stern’s documentation has wanted to demystify and destroy this workplace. As the timeline of “Telemarketers” presents his own growth from CDG and beyond, Lipman-Stern uses his experience and footage to seriously dig into this scam and its participants. But he couldn’t do this without his energetic best friend and co-worker, Pat Pespas. In the not-so-glory days, we see Pat snort coke before making calls, and he’s often referred to throughout the journey as “Pat F**kin Pespas!” (with a warm tone). If executive producers Josh and Benny Safdie would be perfect to adapt this story, so would executive producer Danny McBride to play Pespas, a one-of-a-kind fixture we see in so many different somber shades. Pespas is a loved legend in this world, a driven, passionate guy who can be his own worst enemy. In its nuanced way of embracing its subjects, “Telemarketers” gets a heavier layer in presenting a friendship with an addict over some rocky years. 

Pat and Lipman-Stern seek more information and justice against their employer’s employers, beginning a wayward, years-leaping journey that makes up the second half of “Telemarketers.” Pat even goes back undercover to the world of telemarketing and goes “Michael Moore style,” confronting complicit figures in public who won’t return Pat and Lipman-Stern’s calls. It’s part of the comedy and its character study, with Pat donning a golf cap and sunglasses. Still, it’s not the best resource for narrative momentum. Sometimes the adventures of Pat and Sam (and co-director Adam Bhala Lough, who joins later in the shoot) have the air of simply futzing around and seeing just how many people won’t speak to them. But beholding the dedication and specific knowledge of those trying to challenge the system is what counts most here.

As much as you want “Telemarketers” to have a more direct focus for its David v. Goliath exposé, it’s not about that, and sometimes that is frustrating. But because we see it all with such humanizing honesty, Lipman-Stern’s intricate care for this world and its greatest injustices becomes our own. By the end of Lipman-Stern’s journey, “Telemarketers” has given scumbags like Pat an authentic voice, and it’s not trying to rip you off. 

Full series screened for review. The first episode of “Telemarketers” is now playing on Max, with new episodes on August 20 and 27th. 

Inspired by Akiko Yano’s 1991 ballad of the same name, writer/director Kōji Fukada’s gentle drama “Love Life” tackles those two very broad subjects (love & life) through the intimate introspection of characters caught up in a complex web of interconnected relationships. Fukada’s melodrama explores how these connections form and fracture—how they’re affected by grief and how distance (emotional & physical) can sometimes be necessary to understand them fully and ourselves.  

From an outsider’s perspective, it seems social workers and relative newlyweds Taeko (Fumino Kimura, a slow-burn heartbreaker) and Jirō (Kento Nagayama, devastatingly understated) live an idyllic life raising the precocious Keita (Tetsuta Shimada), her son from a previous marriage, in a modest, sun-filled apartment. Their congenial co-workers help them plan a surprise party for Jirō’s father, Makoto (Tomorô Taguchi). His parents live close enough to them that Taeko can wave from her balcony to her mother-in-law Myoe (Misuzu Kanno). Yet underneath the cheeriness of this sunny situation lurks deep-rooted familial tensions, unspoken secrets, growing jealousies, and an impending fissure in their young marriage.

Fukada masterfully teases out these tensions slowly. First, with glances, sometimes shared, sometimes just rendered. Then through casual dialogue laced with subtle, hurtful barbs. And finally, through grand gestures and monologues that reveal unexpressed feelings, misplaced loyalties, unmasked selfishness, and long overdue self-realizations. 

While all of this tension was brewing before the surprise party, which also serves as a celebration for the six-year-old Keita’s recent Othello championship, a mishap involving Jirō’s jilted ex Yamazaki (Hirona Yamazaki), an unkind implication that Takeo is “used goods” from Makoto, and, worst of all, a tragic accident involving Keita, brings everything swelling to the surface. The sudden reappearance of Taeko’s first husband, the half-Korean transient Park (Atom Sunada, wonderfully maddening), who abandoned them years earlier, makes matters even worse.

Deaf and houseless, with a stray cat in tow, Park roars back into Taeko’s life when she is most emotionally volatile. That the two never seemed to have had any real closure remains an open wound for Taeko (and, unbeknownst to her, Jirō’). It is now flayed and exposed for all to see. 

Park disrupts a wake held in a drab, colorless building, his ragged, mustard yellow t-shirt contrasting with everyone’s solemn black. He slaps Taeko in the face; violence erupts as he’s ushered out, and she crashes to the floor, sobbing. This burst of anger—and their shared, guttural wailing—comes as much of a shock as the accident that led to the wake. There is an intimacy the two share through their biological connection to Keita that draws them together and that Jirō cannot fully comprehend.

Acting as his translator, Taeko then begins helping Park receive social aid, at first reluctantly, then later at the encouragement of Jirō. As the two exes spend more time together, Jirō also finds himself drawn back to his ex, Yamazaki, who he similarly abandoned in an emotional limbo when he got with Taeko. All four seem stuck, frozen by their past actions and the people they used to be, unable to fully move on. 

In exploring the intricacies of these uneasy relationships, Fukada utilizes the melodramatic monologue in all its glory. While there can be an artificiality to monologues, the raw and complex contradictions each character contends with are rooted in emotions that never once ring false, and the actors bring an authenticity that transcends treacle. 

These intricacies are further aided by Fukada’s blocking and framing of bodies. At times, characters, filmed in zoomed-out full frames, are separated by the length of a table, a park bench, or a sea of office desks. Sometimes in these moments, a character shares the frame with another without even realizing it. A connection, even within distance. In other scenes on the apartment balcony, in a cramped car, or inside a tiny bathroom, they are acutely aware of each other, Fukada filming in tight medium close-ups and two-shots. The intimacy of the moments is undeniable.

While Taeko and Jirō do return to each other, they must first traverse a great distance emotionally and physically. In the film’s final moments, an impressive, almost unbroken shot that follows Taeko and Jirō from their dining room out to the empty street below, Fukada uses both these framing styles to show the current status of the couple’s connection and how much distance between them remains. 

He leaves them and the audience on an uncertain note, contemplating what might come next, as Akiko Yano croons, “Whatever the distance between us, nothing can stop me loving you.”

Now playing in theaters. 

My grandfather served valiantly on World War II, landing on the beaches of Normandy, coming home, and never speaking of it again for decades. Near the end of his life, he started to share some stories, often unexpectedly at family gatherings, things he had never told anyone, but one suspects he had thought about for decades. I often wished I could get him to sit down and talk about his life, but I knew it was too painful for him to do so. I thought that feeling of what’s lost when we don’t record history while watching the excellent “Aurora’s Sunrise,” a film that both chronicles a horrendously dark chapter in world history but also speaks to the value of filmmaking in the first place. It’s a stunning hybrid that melds animation, interview footage with its subject, and a 1919 silent film once thought lost to history that’s about her life. Imagine being able to sit with a loved one and see their harrowing life story unfold both in new animated recreations and actual footage from the era that’s over a century old. Aurora Mardiganian’s story is a moving tale of heroism that Hollywood once thought harrowing enough to make into a truly disturbing feature film. Now it’s been resurrected, over a hundred years later, to be told again. That’s the power of filmmaking.

Arshaluys Mardiganian was born in 1901 in a small village in the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, the Ottomans committed genocide against the Armenian people, and Aurora’s family was ripped apart. As thousands of Armenians were murdered, Aurora was part of a death march that nearly killed her multiple times and forced her to bear witness to countless atrocities. Like a lot of young women, she was sold into the slave market, but she escaped, finding her way eventually to St. Petersburg, which promised a route home. Eventually landing on a boat out of Oslo to New York City, she made it to America, and she wrote a book called Ravished Armenia that would be used to draft the film “Auction of Souls,” a project designed to bring attention to the plight of Armenians. Lost for generations, part of the film was found in the ‘90s and restored for release in 2009. Scenes from “Auction of Souls,” starring Mardiganian herself, are cut into “Aurora’s Sunrise,” including a lengthy interview with Aurora from the ‘90s and animated recreations of her story.

“Aurora’s Sunrise” is a historical documentary about the horror of the Armenian genocide, but its power comes from being filtered through the eyes and voice of one of its survivors. It forces one to consider how many stories, horrors, and triumphs have been lost to history because they didn’t have a film like “Auction of Souls” or a confident storyteller like Aurora to tell them. The events in this film unfolded over a century ago, yet it all feels so present in director Inna Sahakyan’s hands because of how much she gives them to Aurora. A narrator tells parts of her story, but we also hear Aurora herself often, intercut with footage of her as a young woman recreating her trauma. The layers of filmmaking—truth on recreation on truth—give the whole thing a fascinating power because it emphasizes the need to not only have people willing to tell these stories but also to listen.

I wished some of the animation was a little sharper, although I suspect the lack of style is intentional. Characters have a habit of floating instead of walking and minimal facial expressions, but a stronger animated look might have really amplified the sense of memory in the overall piece. Christine Aufderhaar’s lovely score helps greatly with the animated segments, giving them an even greater sense of loss without being manipulative.

The interview with Aurora herself is captivating, but I found myself most entranced every time “Sunrise” cut to “Auction of Souls.” Here’s a silent film with hundreds of extras shot in the California desert, depicting abject horrors that took place relatively recently on the other side of the world. It was clearly an act of activism, but it’s also just a breathtakingly daring production that looks like it was truly dangerous to film. And all of it was almost lost forever. In an era when it seems like everything is being recorded all the time, leading to unbelievable access to events happening around the world, “Aurora’s Sunrise” is a reminder that we can’t let it all turn into just white noise, that we need to truly see and hear, or we risk losing the history that has shaped us all.

In limited release now, expanding across the country over the coming weeks.

As those of you with a decent grasp of horror trivia already know, the Demeter was the ship whose ultimately doomed journey to deliver some especially dangerous cargo from Carpathia to London was chronicled in the seventh chapter of the Bram Stoker classic Dracula. Although this section, running 16 pages in my copy, contains some of the most evocative imagery in that sometimes clumsily written book, the whole episode is not that important to the narrative. It simply illustrates how the title character got from point A to B, and on the rare occasions when filmmakers have chosen to bring this story to the screen, the journey is either reduced to a brief montage or newspaper headline or ignored entirely. Now comes “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” a feature-length expansion of those 16 pages that fully examines the strange occurrences aboard one of the most doomed sea journeys in literary history.

Upon hearing this movie’s premise for the first time, I wasn’t entirely convinced it could work. This would be a film where practically every audience member would not only know exactly what the supernatural force at the center of the story is before the Universal logo hits the screen. But they would also—barring some unexpected deviation from the well-known narrative—know exactly how the on-screen events would play out. To me, it looked like just another attempt by Universal to introduce the character that played such a key role in the studio’s history to contemporary audiences following the misfired likes of “Dracula: Untold” and the recent and dreadful “Renfield.” That may have been the case, but the results are a big step up from those previous stumbles, an often striking take on the tale that makes up for what it lacks in surprise with a lot of style and some undeniably effective scare moments.

Set in 1897, the film opens as the Demeter is about to set sail from Carpathia to London, carrying Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham), loyal first mate Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), his grandson Toby (Woody Norman), and a small crew that grows even smaller when some of the locals recruited for the journey get skittish when they see that the cargo contains many large crates being sent by an unknown figure to Carfax Abbey in London. Among those recruited at the last second is Clemens (Corey Hawkins), who signs on as the ship’s doctor to get passage home to England. His expertise comes in handy when one of the boxes is accidentally opened, and an apparent stowaway (Aisling Franciosi) is discovered with a mysterious malady that requires numerous blood transfusions. 

Soon, strange things begin happening on the ship. All the livestock on board and Toby’s beloved dog are slaughtered throughout one grisly evening. Sailors begin seeing and hearing odd things at night while on watch, and even the ship’s rats appear to have vanished, leading up to the deathless line, “A boat without rats—such a thing is against nature.” The members of the crew soon begin disappearing, driving the already skittish ones who remain further into paranoia that is not helped when the stowaway, whose name proves to be Anna, finally wakes up and informs Clemens and the others that to steal a line from Mel Brooks, yes, they have Nosferatu. As Dracula (Javier Botet) continues snacking through the ship, the rapidly dwindling survivors try to figure out how to stop him before they reach London.

The film was directed by André Øvredal, whose previous credits include such intriguing horror-related efforts as “Trollhunter,” “The Autopsy of Jane Doe,” and the underrated “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” This time, he is trying to figure out how to tell a story in which everyone in the audience will be ahead of the characters on the screen at virtually every given point. He accomplishes that primarily by focusing heavily on visual style, creating a moody and haunted atmosphere throughout—even during the scenes set in the daytime—that is both eerily beautiful and just plain eerie. “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” is one of the better-looking horror films to come along in a while. The cat-and-mouse games between Dracula and the crew are staged in a manner that suggests a seafaring variation of “Alien,” with Øvredal milking scenes for maximum tension before culminating in some nasty business. 

Bear in mind, some of that business is indeed quite nasty—the visualization of Dracula shown here is a particularly grotesque and demonic variation, the scenes of slaughter are definitely gory enough to earn the “R” rating, and not only does the one character you are conditioned to expect to somehow avoid a gruesome demise end up suffering just that, but they also do so more than once. The performances, especially the ones from genre MVP Dastmalchian, Franciosi (so effective in “The Nightingale”), and Botet, are all strong and convincing, which helps to raise the emotional stakes to make up for the lack of surprise.

There are two points where the film stumbles a bit. Although the relatively slow and measured pacing employed by Øvredal to generate suspense is mostly effective and preferable to the quick-cut approach others might have taken, a few scenes here run on too long for their own good. Also, the film—Spoiler Alert!—indulges in one of the most irritating elements of contemporary horror cinema, a final scene that exists solely to set up future movies if this one does well at the box office. 

And yet, the rest of the movie works enough so that these flaws don’t hurt things too badly. “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” may not be a classic in the annals of Dracula cinema along the lines of the Terence Fisher’s Hammer production “Horror of Dracula,” Werner Herzog’s version of “Nosferatu the Vampyre,” or Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula.” But it is a smart, well-made, and sometimes downright creepy take on the tale that both horror buffs and regular moviegoers can appreciate in equal measure. 

In theaters now.

Positioned as the start of a spy franchise for star Gal Gadot a la “Mission: Impossible” or the James Bond films, Tom Harper’s “Heart of Stone” is the film equivalent of trying to make something go “viral.” It’s an overly calibrated hodge-podge of better movies with absolutely no original thought of its own, populated by stock characters, and brought to life with uninspired filmmaking. 

Gadot plays Rachel Stone, a member of a secret peacekeeping operation called the Charter who is undercover as a newbie MI6 tech agent. A job that takes her—and the movie—across the globe from the Alps to London to Lisbon to Senegal and finally Iceland, yet also manages to film all of these locations in the absolute most boring way possible. 

A lifeless Sophie Okonedo plays her boss, Nomad, who recruited her when she was 20 years old. Why? We have no idea! Did she have training beforehand, or was she trained once recruited? “Heart of Stone” doesn’t care. 

Netflix stock actor Matthias Schweighöfer plays “Jack of Hearts,” Rachel’s tech aid, who is always plugged into a supercomputer known as The Heart, which allows him to use surveillance data to aid her in her missions. This data visualizes in front of him, which he manipulates with his hands. This was pretty cool … when Tom Cruise’s character did it in “Minority Report.” Here it plays like a shallow, artless copy. 

The Charter’s mission is explained multiple times through exposition-laden dialogue. In fact, most characters speak in exposition, try-hard quips, or melodramatic monologues. Actors Paul Ready and Jing Lusi, as Stone’s teammates Bailey and Yang do wonders with their terribly written parts but are not given nearly enough screen time to truly craft fully realized characters. 

Jamie Dornan plays teammate Parker like a toned-down version of Colin Farrell in “Daredevil,” which is a shame because his twisty role really should be played at the highest possible decibel. The same goes for Alia Bhatt as hacker Keya, who can never transcend the character’s many cliches. Only model-turned-actor Jon Kortajarena, a bleached blond baddie in a popped-collar leisure suit, seems to understand what this kind of villainous role requires. 

This is mostly a disappointment coming from co-screenwriter Greg Rucka, whose screenplay adaptation of his own graphic novel “The Old Guard” had a similar ensemble vibe but with lived-in and richly developed characters. It also helped that the director of that film, Gina Prince-Bythewood, has proven time and again as both an excellent actor’s director and also has a keen eye for staging and filming action sequences. 

The same cannot be said for Harper, who cannot properly keep his actors framed—or lit—resulting in many choppy, murky fight scenes. The rest of the action sequences are completely lifted from other, better films. The cold opening in the Alps borrows heavily from more than one Bond movie, while several aerial stunts play like bargain basement “Mission Impossible.” There’s even a sequence that rips off the big dirigible finale from “The Rocketeer”—but with CGI fire that somehow looks worse than the effects in that far superior (and much more fun) 1991 film. 

The lackluster filmmaking does nothing for Gadot, who can kick and punch just fine but cannot emote beyond one bland facial expression. This would maybe be less of an issue if her fight sequences were filmed in a way that highlighted her physical prowess. Along with the murky lighting, Harper’s coverage is everywhere. He simply does not know how to film a movie star. 

Thematically the movie is also an abject failure. It throws around terms like “determinism” without exploring how the philosophy affects the characters’ actions in relation to how The Heart uses an algorithm to “maximize lives saved” in any given situation. Stone has lengthy conversations with the film’s baddies about whether it’s right for them to use its power to take out the people on their naughty list. But she never once questions the Charter’s own brand of interventionism—or that its use of mass surveillance is akin to totalitarianism. 

Even when presented with damning information about the Charter’s past, Stone—and the film—brush aside the implications of imperfection. The much too tidy script lays the blame on a single leader’s mistake rather than a flaw within the machinery or the very foundation of the institution that it advises. 

“Heart of Stone” then wraps up the entire moral issue by killing off many characters and setting Stone up with a brand-new team. This is the age of IP and sequels and franchising, after all. It’s also the era of big data. So, I guess it’s about time we got a soulless film whose entire raison d’etre is to launch a new female-led franchise that also somehow acts as pro-surveillance state propaganda.

On Netflix now. 

In “Between Two Worlds,” Marianne (Juliette Binoche) is first seen waiting in a line at a crowded job referral office, people jostling around her, frustrated by the wall of bureaucracy, desperate for work. She gets a job with a cleaning company, goes through rigorous training, and then suffers through a series of gigs, scrubbing toilets and wiping down office desks in the dead of night. She finally gets a job with a crew who cleans the Ouistreham ferry (which travels from Caen to Portsmouth twice a day). The job is described in fearsome terms as a “commando op”: the crew has to clean 230 rooms twice a day, four minutes per room. The hours are brutal, the work grueling. This is a world where everyone struggles; no one has a car, no one has two coins to throw together, no one has leisure time, no time to make plans or even think.

But Marianne has a secret. She’s actually a journalist working undercover. She has heard about the “crisis” of unemployment, of the “invisible” population of people struggling in these precarious jobs with no stability. She wants to make it real for herself; she wants to not just see it with her own eyes but experience it. She wants to write a book about her time with these “cleaning ladies.”

Directed by Emmanuel Carrère and based on Florence Aubenas’s 2011 book Le quai de Ouistreham, her reporting on the ferry workers in Caen, “Between Two Worlds” is between two subjects: there’s the ferry workers themselves, a rowdy fascinating bunch, and Marianne’s private anxiety about lying to them. The conflict is unavoidable: Marianne does the work like everyone else but can stop at any time. She has a life back in Paris and a book contract. So while her arms shake after making 230 beds and she’s as physically exhausted as her colleagues, she’s still just a tourist. The people she meets have no escape routes. Marianne’s pain and stress about living undercover can’t help but highlight her privilege. The workers she meets are far more interesting than she is.

“Between Two Worlds” does address the inequality and condescension inherent in Marianne’s quest to see the “invisible.” A social worker at the job office recognizes Marianne as a famous author and asks her what the hell she thinks she is doing, trying to be a cleaning lady. Didn’t it occur to Marianne that she would be taking a job from someone who actually needed it? Marianne hopes, feebly, that it will be worth it to expose unfair and inhumane working conditions, etc. But the questions asked of her in the job office persist throughout. The film has undeniably good intentions. It strives for a Ken Loach-style reality and sometimes achieves it. Juliette Binoche is the only star. The rest of the people in the film (except for one) are all plucked from real life with no other credits. This highlights the “difference” of Marianne, part of the group yet somehow separate from it.

The excellent Hélène Lambert plays Chrystèle, a single mother whose only option is the ferry job. She wants to save her money to get more tattoos. She has to walk to work, and so Marianne, who has a car (given to her, improbably, by a fellow cleaning lady who happens to know someone with a beat-up car they’re willing to pass on to Marianne for free), offers to drive Chrystèle to and from work. A strange and meaningful friendship blossoms, although you can see Marianne assessing Chrystèle as a potential “subject” for her book. Chrystèle is a great character. She’s tough and capable but also fragile and open, qualities she has sought to cover up to face her challenges. Marianne helps her to take a little bit of time to chill out, to relax. Chrystèle’s openness to this new friendship is perilous. You wonder: How will she react when the truth is revealed? Because it must be revealed!

The problem is in the setup. Marianne wants to know what it is like for “these people.” She sees what it is like, and she experiences it. But what it is “like” is different than what it IS. It’s easy for her to encourage Chrystèle to take an afternoon off and go to the beach. Why hasn’t it occurred to Chrystèle? Because she has three young sons, barely any income, and lives in constant stress. The ferry crew is a tight-knit bunch. I’ve seen a couple of reviews criticizing their good-natured camaraderie as not believable. I guess these critics have never worked an exhausting menial job, where camaraderie with co-workers is an important survival skill. It helps you get through the day. Their acceptance of Marianne is contingent upon her capability: if she dragged them down with incompetence, they’d shun her, but she keeps up with the work, so they embrace her.

These peripheral characters are all so interesting they could carry their own individual films: The tough supervisor (Evelyne Porée), the glamorous Justine (Emily Madeleine), the hopeful romantic Cédric (Didier Pupin), the young woman (Léa Carne) dreaming of skipping town with her boyfriend. The problem with “Between Two Worlds” is that it presents the ferry crew’s work as though the critique is understood, but it isn’t. Yes, the conditions are brutal. But the system is to blame. It’s always the system, and Marianne shows no interest in the systemic issues creating these appalling job conditions, widening the gap between haves and have-nots. This “lack” of a serious critique makes “Between Two Worlds” the story of a pampered journalist confronted with how “these people live,” plus the fallout when her lie is discovered, rather than a real shot fired at an unfair system.

Marianne’s book will presumably be a success, and her middle-to-high-class readers will remind themselves to be friendly to the cleaning ladies and give them good tips.

But what happened to Chrystèle? How is she doing? What is she doing? Is she okay? Marianne is forgettable. Chrystèle is not.

Now playing in theaters. 

Director Matthew López makes an impressive feature debut with “Red, White & Royal Blue,” a love story that skillfully blends the familiar beats of a classic movie romance with the distinctive details of two of the world’s most public young men trying to keep their relationship private. Adapted from Casey McQuiston’s best-selling book, the film is about a British prince and the son of the President of the United States. Both want to keep the relationship secret to protect their privacy, but protecting their families from controversy is even more important to them.

Before that, we have the part we go to movies to see, where initial hostility turns to grudging respect, then some flirty banter, and then a growing recognition that they are deeply in love. Alex Clarmont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) is the son of President Ellen Clarmont (Uma Thurman) and Congressman Oscar Diaz (Clifton Collins Jr.). He is passionate about politics but confined to ceremonial assignments, like escorting Nora, the granddaughter of the US Vice President (a charming Rachel Hilson), to the wedding of the grandson of the King of England and next in line to the throne. Alex is annoyed to be relegated to such a photo-op of an event, and does not want to see the groom’s brother, Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine). We will find out later why they dislike one another. 

They get into an embarrassing mess (literally) at the wedding reception. In international relations, it seems important to show the world that the two young men are great friends. It’s a classic rom-com set-up, but this is a more ambitious story. López and his gifted cast deftly shift the tone from near slapstick to touching drama. 

The cast is refreshingly diverse, with an understated, almost casual, natural sense that this is just the world these characters live in. Each supporting character is comfortable with who they are, and they do not feel they need to mute their accents or otherwise “blend in.” It becomes a delicately handled plot point when Alex interacts with a Hispanic reporter, always looking for an edge. We see it clearly in how the journalist speaks to Alex in Spanish to assume a kind of kinship and intimacy that Alex parries uncomfortably. The always-terrific Collins as Oscar has a lovely scene showing his son he supports his love for Henry. Oscar briefly references the challenges he and Ellen faced, implying that coming from different cultures made people skeptical about their future. 

These small, careful touches give what otherwise could be a glossy but bland Hallmark-style film some texture, and López’s background in musical theater gives him a good sense of the rhythm of storytelling. A New Year’s Eve party scene is edited with wit and style by Kristina Hetherington and Nick Moore. And a scene when the still-antagonistic couple is stuck in a literal closet is just the right mix of claustrophobic discomfort, a growing realization of their attraction, and, even more surprising, their mutual respect. 

Impressively, the film allows its racially, culturally, and nationally diverse characters to bypass the code-switching that real-life and fictional characters often do to make others around them more comfortable. In that spirit, it grants Alex and Henry frankness in depicting their relationship, including their sexual relationship, which is explicit but portrayed with respect for its increasing intimacy. Alex is bisexual. Henry is gay. They both struggle with what that means for their very public families, but they know who they are, and when they let themselves, they know what they wish for their lives as a couple.

Still, it is a fairy tale, so there are plot contrivances that are just too convenient. But the shimmering sweetness between Perez and Galitzine supports the very willing suspension of disbelief, and that’s what happily ever after is all about. 

Now playing on Prime Video.

At this point, there isn’t a day that passes without artificial intelligence being at the top of relevant headlines. There’s a constant volley between news of new AI innovation and articles warning or announcing the ways corporations are utilizing the technology to replace humans. While we’re already accustomed to Siri and Alexa, the industry seems to be pivoting away from personal convenience and into employment infringement and human replacement. Sophie Barthes’ new feature, “The Pod Generation” takes a simple stance on this development: it’s bad.

Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are a married couple living in the not-so-distant future. Rachel is an ambitious employee at her tech company, the breadwinner of the couple. Alvy is a passionate botanist, teaching the uninterested youth about nature while grasping onto the traditionalism of connecting with the physical world rather than the technological one. 

The world has moved on, preferring nature pods within homes, AI therapists, and artificial wombs. As Rachel and Alvy decide to have a child, to leave Rachel’s work and body unaffected by pregnancy, they opt for the sought-after Womb Center, a service of tech giant Pegasus that provides the wealthy with detachable pods to grow their babies. Yet throughout the process, Alvy and Rachel’s philosophies regarding the technology butt heads. 

“The Pod Generation” is thoughtful and timely but flat. It’s an opaque expression of an overtly simple thesis. As AI advances, humans distance themselves from the natural world, possessing a penchant for convenience over connection. Rachel and Alvy are stark foils of one another, so much so that neither truly feels like a natural character. Every line in the script feels written blatantly intended to get the point across, to drive home a sentiment. In turn, every conversation is forced. 

Barthes’ film does make a valiant effort to showcase technological progression versus intervention across the entire culture of this new world, from domestic squabbles to capitalist nightmare characters like Linda (Rosalie Craig), the head woman in charge of the Womb Center. Humanity plummets with over-commercialization and detachment in compassionate roles like motherhood and therapy. 

Pegasus’ pseudo-feminist rhetoric that the pods save women from job interference and the oh-so-horrifying bodily changes is another thoughtful inclusion showing that capitalism and humanity never intersect. However, these ideas are explored with a stark script rather than emotional expression, so every statement is absorbed intellectually but never emotionally. The tension between Rachel and Alvy is inauthentic, like a prop for a main idea rather than an empathetic cornerstone it posits to be.

Clarke and Ejiofor are as dejected as the film itself. Though the script doesn’t afford them much to work with other than a checklist of dialogue that seems to check that the audience is grasping the premise incessantly, no chemistry between them would lead us to believe they’re a couple, even with philosophical issues aside. 

“The Pod Generation” trucks forward like a long hike, with wide-eyed introductory ambition that quickly turns to a tired drag to the finish line. The set design and cinematography are the film’s only grounding aspects. This new but near world has a dystopian beauty in its landscape, but it doesn’t save the film from being a middling attempt at a pointed social dossier. Barthes’ film has potential but simply feels like an idea in its early stages. 

Now playing in theaters.