Author: jose

“Barbie,” director and co-writer Greta Gerwig’s summer splash, is a dazzling achievement, both technically and in tone. It’s a visual feast that succeeds as both a gleeful escape and a battle cry. So crammed with impeccable attention to detail is “Barbie” that you couldn’t possibly catch it all in a single sitting; you’d have to devote an entire viewing just to the accessories, for example. The costume design (led by two-time Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran) and production design (led by six-time Oscar nominee Sarah Greenwood) are constantly clever and colorful, befitting the ever-evolving icon, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (a three-time Oscar nominee) gives everything a glossy gleam. It’s not just that Gerwig & Co. have recreated a bunch of Barbies from throughout her decades-long history, outfitted them with a variety of clothing and hairstyles, and placed them in pristine dream houses. It’s that they’ve brought these figures to life with infectious energy and a knowing wink.

“Barbie” can be hysterically funny, with giant laugh-out-loud moments generously scattered throughout. They come from the insularity of an idyllic, pink-hued realm and the physical comedy of fish-out-of-water moments and choice pop culture references as the outside world increasingly encroaches. But because the marketing campaign has been so clever and so ubiquitous, you may discover that you’ve already seen a fair amount of the movie’s inspired moments, such as the “2001: A Space Odyssey” homage and Ken’s self-pitying ‘80s power ballad. Such is the anticipation industrial complex.

And so you probably already know the basic plot: Barbie (Margot Robbie), the most popular of all the Barbies in Barbieland, begins experiencing an existential crisis. She must travel to the human world in order to understand herself and discover her true purpose. Her kinda-sorta boyfriend, Ken (Ryan Gosling), comes along for the ride because his own existence depends on Barbie acknowledging him. Both discover harsh truths—and make new friends –along the road to enlightenment. This bleeding of stark reality into an obsessively engineered fantasy calls to mind the revelations of “The Truman Show” and “The LEGO Movie,” but through a wry prism that’s specifically Gerwig’s.

This is a movie that acknowledges Barbie’s unrealistic physical proportions—and the kinds of very real body issues they can cause in young girls—while also celebrating her role as a feminist icon. After all, there was an astronaut Barbie doll (1965) before there was an actual woman in NASA’s astronaut corps (1978), an achievement “Barbie” commemorates by showing two suited-up women high-fiving each other among the stars, with Robbie’s Earth-bound Barbie saluting them with a sunny, “Yay, space!” This is also a movie in which Mattel (the doll’s manufacturer) and Warner Bros. (the film’s distributor) at least create the appearance that they’re in on the surprisingly pointed jokes at their expense. Mattel headquarters features a spacious, top-floor conference room populated solely by men with a heart-shaped, “Dr. Strangelove”-inspired lamp hovering over the table, yet Will Ferrell’s CEO insists his company’s “gender-neutral bathrooms up the wazoo” are evidence of diversity. It’s a neat trick.

As the film’s star, Margot Robbie finds just the right balance between satire and sincerity. She’s the perfect casting choice; it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed stunner completely looks the part, of course, but she also radiates the kind of unflagging, exaggerated optimism required for this heightened, candy-coated world. Later, as Barbie’s understanding expands, Robbie masterfully handles the more complicated dialogue by Gerwig and her co-writer and frequent collaborator, filmmaker Noah Baumbach. From a blinding smile to a single tear and every emotion in between, Robbie finds the ideal energy and tone throughout. Her performance is a joy to behold.

And yet, Ryan Gosling is a consistent scene-stealer as he revels in Ken’s himbo frailty. He goes from Barbie’s needy beau to a swaggering, macho doofus as he throws himself headlong into how he thinks a real man should behave. (Viewers familiar with Los Angeles geography will particularly get a kick out of the places that provide his inspiration.) Gosling sells his square-jawed character’s earnestness and gets to tap into his “All New Mickey Mouse Club” musical theater roots simultaneously. He’s a total hoot.

Within the film’s enormous ensemble—where the women are all Barbies and the men are all Kens, with a couple of exceptions—there are several standouts. They include a gonzo Kate McKinnon as the so-called “Weird Barbie” who places Robbie’s character on her path; Issa Rae as the no-nonsense President Barbie; Alexandra Shipp as a kind and capable Doctor Barbie; Simu Liu as the trash-talking Ken who torments Gosling’s Ken; and America Ferrera in a crucial role as a Mattel employee. And we can’t forget Michael Cera as the one Allan, bumbling awkwardly in a sea of hunky Kens—although everyone else forgets Allan.

But while “Barbie” is wildly ambitious in an exciting way, it’s also frustratingly uneven at times. After coming on strong with wave after wave of zippy hilarity, the film drags in the middle as it presents its more serious themes. It’s impossible not to admire how Gerwig is taking a big swing with heady notions during the mindless blockbuster season, but she offers so many that the movie sometimes stops in its propulsive tracks to explain itself to us—and then explain those points again and again. The breezy, satirical edge she established off the top was actually a more effective method of conveying her ideas about the perils of toxic masculinity and entitlement and the power of female confidence and collaboration.

One character delivers a lengthy, third-act speech about the conundrum of being a woman and the contradictory standards to which society holds us. The middle-aged mom in me was nodding throughout in agreement, feeling seen and understood, as if this person knew me and was speaking directly to me. But the longtime film critic in me found this moment a preachy momentum killer—too heavy-handed, too on-the-nose, despite its many insights.  

Still, if such a crowd-pleasing extravaganza can also offer some fodder for thoughtful conversations afterward, it’s accomplished several goals simultaneously. It’s like sneaking spinach into your kid’s brownies—or, in this case, blondies.

Available in theaters on July 21st. 

Early in this entirely engrossing drama from German writer/director Christian Petzold, Leon, an extremely peevish young novelist played as a kind of encyclopedia of misery by Thomas Schubert, asks his friend Felix about a portfolio he’s working on as an application to art school. Leon is pale and lumpish and cheerless; Felix, played with an appealing bounce by the part-Jamaican actor Langston Uibel, is cheerful (albeit a little clueless; he can’t hear the ping in his car engine before it breaks down and leaves the two almost stranded at the movie’s outset) and open to experience. Aside from their aesthetic leanings, they don’t seem to have much in common. Responding to Leon’s question about the “theme” of his portfolio, Felix says, “Water.” Leon responds with a cheerless smirk and shoots his friend down: “Water’s not a theme.”

While Petzold isn’t known for anything like overt jokiness, he’s poking a little fun at himself here. As it happens, “Afire” (its original German title is “Roter Himmel” or “Red Sky”) is the second film of a quartet whose theme will be the elements; Petzold’s last film, “Undine,” had water as its defining element. The fire in this film spreads through forests on the German island where Leon and Felix have gone on a work retreat.

After their car breaks down and they’re forced to hoof it to a vacation house owned by Felix’s family, Leon and Felix, the precise nature of whose relationship we are never quite sure of, are surprised that there’s another lodger there. The beguiling Nadja is played by the beguiling Paula Beer in the third of her films with Petzold. (In “Undine,” she played a mermaid. Sort of.) Nadja is heard before she is seen, engaging in enthusiastic sex in the main bedroom of the thin-walled house. This makes Leon silently, seethingly crazy—almost everything makes Leon silently, seethingly crazy—but it turns Felix on a little bit. When finally visible, Nadja is cheerful and open. Soon we meet her sex partner, Devid—the spelling, Felix notes, in “an old GDR quirk”—who’s a rescue swimmer at the beach. As Felix, Devid, and Nadja enjoy the summer, Leon frets over his latest novel. His editor, a kindly older man, is coming to the island to discuss the manuscript of the novel, titled “Club Sandwich.” Shortly after he learns that Nadja spends her days as an ice cream vendor near the island’s deluxe hotel, Nadja asks him to look at the book. He scoffs. A cleaning lady once asked him to read a story of his, and she pronounced it “a little schmaltzy.” If the assessment of a cleaning lady could set off such a paroxysm of self-doubt … well, Leon doesn’t complete that thought, but we get it. When his editor shows up, Leon is in for a surprise about Nadja that ups the ante in what seems to be a sad-sack comedy of failure.

For much of “Afire,” Petzold really drops the hammer down on Leon, and everything that happens to him does nothing to compel him to react with any less petulance. When Felix and Devid start their own sexual affair—which Nadja has no problem with and which Leon observes with a vague exasperation—the dramatic stakes of the movie ascend not unlike the flames that the quartet can see from the roof of their house as it devours forest land.

Petzold has been quietly and industriously building one of this century’s most consistently impressive filmographies. The compulsive literacy (and literary-allusive) dialogue here, combined with the precise but unshowy mise-en-scene and editing, may, for some, call to mind the late, great Èric Rohmer. But Petzold, while not without humor, is a generally graver filmmaker than Rohmer, and the way this film steers into tragedy is wrenching. It leads to a conclusion that in some respects could be called pat, but it also justifies itself well enough—largely due to the exceptional work of the actors, particularly Schubert and Beer—to pass muster. Like all of Petzold’s recent pictures, “Afire” draws you in confidently and prepares its knockout emotional punch with scrupulousness and a vivid sense of surprise.

Now playing in theaters. 

Last summer, Tom Cruise was given credit for saving the theatrical experience with the widely beloved “Top Gun: Maverick.” One of our last true movie stars returns over a year later as the blockbuster experience seems to be fading with high-budget Hollywood endeavors like “The Flash” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” falling short of expectations. Can he be Hollywood’s savior again? I hope so because “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is a ridiculously good time. Once again, director Christopher McQuarrie, Cruise, and their team have crafted a deceptively simple thriller, a film that bounces good, bad, and in-between characters off each other for 163 minutes (an admittedly audacious runtime for a film with “Part One” in the title that somehow doesn’t feel long). Some of the overcooked dialogue about the importance of this particular mission gets repetitive, but then McQuarrie and his team will reveal some stunningly conceived action sequence that makes all the spy-speak tolerable. Hollywood is currently questioning the very state of their industry. Leave it to Ethan Hunt to accept the mission.

While this series essentially rebooted in its fourth chapter, changing tone and style significantly, this seventh film very cleverly ties back to the 1996 Brian De Palma original more than any other, almost as if it’s uniting the two halves of the franchise. It’s not an origin story, but it does have the tenor of something like the excellent “Casino Royale” in how it unpacks the very purpose of a beloved character. “Dead Reckoning Part One” is about Ethan Hunt reconciling how he got to this point in his life, and McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen narratively recall De Palma’s film repeatedly. And with its sweaty, canted close-ups, Fraser Taggart’s cinematography wants you to remember the first movie—how Ethan Hunt became an agent and the price he’s been paying from the beginning.

It’s not just visual nods. “Dead Reckoning” returns former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) to Ethan’s life with a new mission. Kittridge informs Hunt that there’s essentially a rogue A.I. in the world that superpowers are battling to control. The A.I. can be manipulated with a key split into two halves. One of those halves is about to be sold on the black market, and so Ethan and his team—including returning characters Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg)—have to not just intercept the key but discern its purpose. The key only matters if IMF can figure out where and how to use it.

After a desert shoot-out that ushers Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) back into the series, the first major set piece in “Dead Reckoning Part One” takes place in the Dubai airport, where Hunt discovers that there are other players in this espionage chess game, including a familiar face in Gabriel (Esai Morales), a morally corrupt mercenary who is one of the reasons that Hunt is an agent in the first place. Gabriel is a chaos agent, someone who not only wants to watch the world burn but hopes the fire inflicts as much pain as possible. In many ways, Gabriel is the inverse of Ethan, whose weakness has been his empathy and personal connections—Gabriel has none of those, and he’s basically working for the A.I., trying to get the key so no one can control it.

At the airport, Ethan also crosses paths with a pickpocket named Grace (Hayley Atwell), who gets stuck in the middle of all of this world-changing insanity, along with a few agents trying to hunt down the rogue Ethan and are played by a wonderfully exasperated Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis. A silent assassin, memorably sketched by Pom Klementieff, is also essential to a few action scenes. And Vanessa Kirby returns as the arms dealer White Widow, and, well, if the ensemble has a weakness, it’s Kirby’s kind of lost performance. She has never quite been able to convey “power player” in these films as she should.

But that doesn’t matter because people aren’t here for the White Widow’s backstory. They want to see Tom Cruise run. The image most people associate with “Mission: Impossible” is probably Mr. Cruise stretching those legs and swinging those arms. He does that more than once here, but it seems like the momentum of that image was the artistic force behind this entire film. “Dead Reckoning Part One” prioritizes movement—trains, cars, Ethan’s legs. It’s an action film that’s about speed and urgency, something that has been so lost in the era of CGI’s diminished stakes. Runaway trains will always have more inherent visceral power than waves of animated bad guys, and McQuarrie knows how to use it sparingly to make an action film that both feels modern and old-fashioned at the same time. These films don’t over-rely on CGI, ensuring we know that it’s really Mr. Cruise jumping off that motorcycle. When punches connect, bodies fly, and cars crash into each other—we feel it instead of just passively observing it. The action here is so wonderfully choreographed that only “John Wick: Chapter 4” compares for the best in the genre this year.

There’s also something fascinating thematically here about a movie star battling A.I. and questioning the purpose of his job. Blockbusters have been cautionary tech tales for generations but think about the meta aspect of a spy movie in which the world could collapse if the espionage game is overtaken by a sentient computer that stars an actor who has been at the center of controversy regarding his own deepfakes. There’s also a definite edge to the plotting here that plays into the actor’s age in that Ethan is forced to answer questions about what matters to him regarding his very unusual work/life balance, a reflection of what a performer like Cruise must face as he reaches the end of an action movie rope that’s been much longer than anyone could have even optimistically expected. Cruise may or may not intend that reading—although I suspect he does—but it adds another layer to the action.

Of course, the most important thing is this: “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is just incredibly fun. It feels half its length and contains enough memorable action sequences for some entire franchises. Will Cruise save the blockbuster experience again? Maybe. And he might do it again next summer too.

In theaters on July 12^th.

“20 Days in Mariupol,” about the first 20 days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, spares no one’s sensibilities. It goes on a short list of great documentaries that the viewer will never want to watch again and likely won’t need to because some of the images are so gruesome and the context so upsetting that they’ll be burned into your memory.

Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and two of his colleagues, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, were present for the first three weeks of the Russian onslaught, which began February 24 when Vladimir Putin announced a “Special Military Operation” in “self-defense.” Chernov’s narration confesses that he feels guilty for not staying longer, even though the odds of getting killed increased as the bodies of soldiers, civilians, and reporters piled up. 

Although “20 Days in Mariupol” begins at the end, it quickly transforms into a linear report of what the journalists saw. This movie is culled from approximately 25 hours of material that Chernov’s team recorded on-site; they could only get 30 minutes of it to the Associated Press due to the size of video data. It’s questionable whether much of it would have been okayed for inclusion in reporting anyway because of the Western media’s aversion to showing blood and death. 

A big part of what makes the movie so fascinating, valuable, and intense is how it lets certain events unfold in what feels like real-time, even though there are edits for the sake of compression and clarity. The only wholly unnecessary touch is a subdued minor-key synth score that plays during extended sequences of dread and terror. The movie doesn’t need it. The images and sounds speak for themselves.

What’s most striking about footage from the earliest days is the textbook surreality of it all. A scene will be set for us in a way that makes things seem typical or “normal.” The buildings and roads within camera range appear to be intact and functional. There are no planes in the sky, no tanks on the roads. Then comes an element that’s not normal, such as a plume of smoke on the horizon or a tearful older woman approaching the journalists to say she’s been driven out of her neighborhood with only the clothes on her back and doesn’t know what to do. (The filmmakers tell her to go home; she’s later found alive, but her house is destroyed.) 

Things get weirder and more frightening from there. The city is pounded into rubble by Russian bombs, missiles, artillery shells, firefights, and vehicular damage caused by the arrival of armored columns. Martial law is declared. There aren’t enough bomb shelters to house all the civilians, so they huddle in basements as explosives rain down. Electricity, water, and internet service either cease or are choked to near-uselessness. 

It becomes hard for anyone not in the military or the press to get reliable information. The journalists are reluctant to approach soldiers who seem to be Ukrainians because they might be Russians pretending to be Ukrainian. Even those with privileged access and protection have to sift through conflicting information, bad information, and disinformation. The movie shows rumormongering occurring on the streets of Mariupol and on Russian television news programs, which insist that reports of civilian casualties are “fake news” and that video of atrocities against Ukrainian civilians has been altered or manufactured. When a British journalist confronts Russia’s UN ambassador and asks him to comment on Chernov’s reporting, he says, unsettlingly, “Who wins the information war, wins the war.”  

This is a dispatch from hell on earth. The fragmented, chaotic, imprecise nature of it is a revelation. 

A four-year-old dies on an operating table after being shredded by Russian shells. A teenage boy playing soccer outside his school loses his legs in a bomb explosion; we see the bloody stumps as his body lies still on a gurney and see and hear his anguished father wailing. The last working surgeon in the hospital tells the filmmakers, “Show that Putin bastard the eyes of this child!” and yells, “Show what these motherf**kers are doing to civilians!” An eerily subdued sequence follows a team of volunteers dumping 70 bodies into mass graves. Half were Ukrainians killed in eight separate shellings in a 24-hour period. The rest were people who died at home of other causes but could not be collected and properly identified and disposed of because the invasion had destroyed the city’s infrastructure and bureaucracy.

An extended sequence dramatizes a news story that may already be familiar to viewers because it made international headlines: a pregnant woman who was about to give birth died along with her baby after being airlifted from the mostly-deserted obstetrics ward of the city’s bombed-out general hospital to another facility. Her pelvis was crushed by wreckage from the Russian bombing, making vaginal birth impossible. Medics tried to deliver the baby via cesarean section, but it was already dead. When the mother realized she was about to lose her child, she cried to the medics, “Just kill me now!” 

“This is painful to watch,” Chernov tells the audience, “But it must be painful to watch.”   

Now playing in theaters. 

You don’t need to know your Wicked from your Waitress or your Lerner from your Loewe to enjoy the earnest humor of “Theater Camp”—but it helps.

The mockumentary is by, for, and about hardcore theater nerds, but there’s enough infectious, let’s-put-on-a-show energy to entertain casual fans—for a while, anyway. Because for all the zippy audition montages and clever turns of phrase that propel the first act, “Theater Camp” eventually drags in the midsection before picking back up again for the big finale. It’s based on a 2020 short that directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman made with their co-writers Ben Platt and Noah Galvin, and you can feel the strain of stretching this concept to feature length. Eventually, the movie abandons the fake documentary structure altogether, which makes it seem unnecessary in the first place.

The filmmakers’ affection for the material, this setting, and each other is evident; they’re all close friends who’ve grown up and worked together for years. That footage at the beginning of the movie of cute kids performing on stage? That’s Gordon and Platt, long before TV’s “The Bear” and the musical “Dear Evan Hansen” would make them famous, respectively. Galvin also starred in “Dear Evan Hansen” on Broadway and is engaged to Platt. Gordon and Galvin both had key supporting roles in Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart.” Lieberman, the only one of the four who does not also appear on screen, has been friends with Platt since high school and directed several of his music videos. It’s clear how much they love this world of hammy, misfit kids who thrive within their tribe in this bucolic location, hours outside New York because they lived it themselves. But the execution doesn’t always match the power of their emotions.

“Theater Camp” begins promisingly with Platt and Gordon co-starring as Amos and Rebecca-Diane, former campers with dreams of stardom who now return annually as counselors. AdirondACTS (a funny idea in itself) is a ramshackle cluster of cabins that’s seen better days but still bursts with youthful glee each summer. This year, though, acting coach Amos and music teacher Rebecca-Diane must run the whole operation, as founder Joan (Amy Sedaris in a frustratingly brief appearance) has suffered a “Bye Bye Birdie”-related seizure and is in a coma. Joan’s wannabe finance bro son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro), shows up and tries to impose his will, but the precocious theater kids immediately see through his inauthenticity and reject him.  

The show must go on, though, which is extremely amusing for a while but grows inconsistently so. Some of the kids are insanely talented—particularly Bailee Bonick, Luke Islam, and Alexander Bello—and it would have been nice to get to know them a bit beyond watching them belt out a show tune or emote with a depth beyond their years. They’re actually way more interesting than the adult characters, except for Galvin’s Glenn, the beleaguered technical whiz with a secret. A bit involving young “Minari” star Alan Kim as a would-be agent who wears suits and makes phone calls all day is emblematic of both the humor and shortcomings of “Theater Camp.” It’s intriguingly specific but also woefully underdeveloped. This is also true of the presence of Ayo Edebiri, who’s so excellent alongside Gordon on “The Bear”: Her character is here under dubious circumstances that the movie doesn’t explore nearly enough.

Beneath the percolating excitement of preparing the original, season-ending musical—a tribute to AdirondACTS’ founder, titled Joan, Still—there is the underlying threat that the camp is on the verge of foreclosure, with the neighboring rich kids’ camp looking to expand onto their land. That could have lent itself to a kind of brash, ‘80s-style class warfare comedy that never materializes.

The problem here is that we’ve seen so much of what “Theater Camp” is doing and seen it done better, from the loving send-up of self-serious theater people in “Waiting for Guffman” to the blissful insularity of “Wet Hot American Summer.” Plus, Todd Graff wrote and directed a 2003 indie similar to this—“Camp”—featuring a young Anna Kendrick and Robin DeJesus.

Still, there are enough scattered moments here that result in big laughs. The lyrics to some of the original songs are hilariously terrible. An exercise exploring the children’s past lives is wonderfully bizarre. And some of the intense advice the counselors give these eager youngsters is thoroughly inappropriate. You may not walk out humming the tunes, but you’ll leave with a smile.

Now playing in theaters. 

When conversations about America’s racist past hit a fever pitch in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, members of the Lakota Nation joined in protest. As Confederate monuments were being toppled one by one, they called for the restoration of one of their sacred sites. The Black Hills in South Dakota, the cradle of their civilization, had been defaced with the visages of four white presidents decades before. If we could crumble the statues built to the oppression of others elsewhere, why not address Mt. Rushmore and all that it represents? 

That is just one of the questions and stories in directors Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli’s searing documentary, “Lakota Nation vs. United States.” Writer and poet Layli Long Soldier’s melodious narration leads the film through an expansive view of the systemic ways the U.S. stripped Indigenous communities from their land, denied them their rights, forbade them their language and culture, murdered generations, abused their children in residential schools, and to this day, continue to harm their communities by trying to extract natural resources and pollute their endangered lands. The film is a history lesson, a poetic cry for justice, a testament to the Lakota Nation’s resilience and acknowledgment of the community’s loss – an incalculable loss that can never be fixed with underwhelming financial reparations – from the U.S. government’s 150-year betrayal of their people. 

“Lakota Nation vs. United States” moves swiftly but thoughtfully through various topics, covering issues like the over 400 land-grabbing treaties that robbed tribes of their homes to historic confrontations from the Battle of Little Bighorn and water protection protests at Standing Rock. Voices of modern-day Lakota activists and elders connect the past to the present, explaining how the treaties and mistreatment of their people in days past have hurt the generations since. This emotionally resonates when retracing the harrowing development of residential schools, which sought to “kill the Indian, save the man,” and the lasting harm it did to rip a culture out of the hearts of its children – if they survived. 

Oral histories weave between the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries in a dreamy nonlinear narrative path written by Long Soldier, Benjamin Hedin, and Laura Tomaselli. Delicately constructed, the narrative shows how systemic dehumanization disenfranchised and villainized Indigenous people and justified their mistreatment in the eyes of white colonists who saw them as savages. But all this leads to the film’s hope for better days ahead, a future that returns the land to its original Lakota stewards. 

Throughout the film, directors Short Bull and Tomaselli couple numerous interviews that personalize the Lakota Nation’s heartaches with montages of archival documents, old news reports, and mesmerizing footage steeped in the natural beauty of the Black Hills. Together, they illustrate the confounding legalese that took millions of acres away from tribes, examine the way media stereotyped Indigenous groups in cartoons and movies (like an abbreviated version of Neil Diamond’s “Reel Injun”), and documented the many painful rewritings of history that erased bloodstains off the records of beloved presidents and historical figures who carried out atrocities in the name of manifest destiny.  

In the U.S. government’s crusade to make the West “safe” for white settlers, untold horrors happened and continue to happen. While history books reimagine cowboys and the General Custers to be the good guys, films like “Lakota Nation vs. United States” are a necessary and vital correction. They are a collection of the living legacies petty tyrants and racist politicians have sought to silence. The Indigenous activists’ ongoing advocacy work is a radical act of defiance, a forceful stop to having their story whitewashed and written for them by outsiders. With its methodical approach, the documentary exhumes the nearly forgotten past, exposes assimilation as a form of violence, and explores how private ownership and capitalism have displaced generations of Lakota from their ancestral homes. “Land Back is a war cry for the liberation of my people,” one activist tells the camera. Because for all the tragedy in the past, the movie ends with a look towards the future and a hope for the next generation. The movement moves towards a better tomorrow if only people outside the Lakota Nation will embrace and support their efforts.

A favorite college professor once compared listening to modern (i.e., 20^th century) opera to doing homework, especially if you weren’t already familiar with the conventions, the tropes, and the general form that modern composers were either departing from or reacting to. I thought about homework as I watched “Final Cut,” a French remake of “One Cut of the Dead,” the meta-textual and often monotonous Japanese zombie comedy.

Like that recent word-of-mouth smash, “Final Cut” follows the making of a Z-grade horror movie within the movie, which is presented without commentary during the movie’s first half hour or so. The next 70+ minutes follow the making of that movie. There’s more dialogue in this remake, especially for its supporting characters, and therefore more attention is paid to the movie within the movie’s nature as a collaborative effort. But somehow, in trying that much harder to enunciate the original movie’s already clear message, the makers of “Final Cut” suck the fun out of the chaotic working conditions and heroic problem-solving skills required to make anything. The dead air and pregnant pauses now feel heavier, and while that’s sometimes amusing, “Final Cut” also rarely seems as playful or ingratiating as “One Cut of the Dead.”

To be fair, watching “Final Cut” didn’t remind me of doing homework because the movie required me to love or have deep knowledge of the filmmaking process. Rather, “Final Cut” is busy but not complex, clever but not smart, and involved rather than involving. Some film buffs might not be surprised to learn that “Final Cut” was directed and adapted by Michel Hazanavicius, whose toothless but watchable meta-comedies include the silent movie homage “The Artist,” the “OSS 117” spy spoofs, and the French New Wave sex dramedy “Redoubtable.” Others might wonder how the ideal viewer of “Final Cut,” who presumably already loves watching movies, is supposed to walk away feeling energized instead of exhausted.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that the 36-minute zombie pastiche that kicks off “Final Cut” looks both more polished and less dynamic than the one that begins “One Cut of the Dead.” The rest of “Final Cut” presumably matters more since that’s when we learn all about the fictional jobbers who made that tired-looking horror pic. Director Remi (Romain Duris) takes a paycheck and struggles to spin several plates after he’s offered a job by the genial but disengaged producer Mounir (Lyes Salem), negotiating on behalf of the Japanese TV executive Mrs. Matsuda (Yoshiko Takehara, in the same role that she previously had in “One Cut of the Dead”).

The stakes are low—Matsuda wants somebody who can deliver a cheap but engaging one-take horror movie to launch her new horror-themed streaming platform—but they seem high enough given the many schticky personalities working on the project. There’s the prima donna leading man Raphael (Finnegan Oldfield), who talks a lot about “veracity,” “volition,” and other haughty-sounding 25-cent words; Nadia (Berenice Bejo, Hazanavicius’ partner), a makeup artist and Remi’s wife; Philippe (Gregory Gadebois), a cameraman and a drunk; and Ava (Matilda Lutz), Raphael’s overwhelmed and over-worked co-star.

Remi’s feelings about making a zombie movie are quickly sublimated into the process of making a zombie movie. He paces up and down naturally lit hallways and staircases, either fills in or delegates last-minute problem-solving, and generally tries to keep everybody happy. He especially wants to please his wife and daughter Romy (Simone Hazanavicius, the real director’s daughter), who loves Raphael and is also very opinionated about authenticity. They race about the camera, put out various fires, and feverishly think on their feet in ways that will maybe re-orient how viewers see the zombie movie that begins “Final Cut.” Now it’s not just another schlocky potboiler—it’s a team effort, a hectic but thrilling high-wire act, a relay race, and a work-for-hire nightmare all in one.

Duris’ wired performance seems emblematic of the movie’s hectic mood, but much of the movie’s comedy dies on the vine, given how deliberately stretched out the movie’s pregnant pauses and dead air now feel. “Final Cut” feels long, even if it’s only about 12 minutes longer than “One Cut of the Dead.” However, that extra legwork does not confer greater depth, nor does this sort of high-concept stunt play to its cast or writer/director’s comedic strengths.

Some of the familiar and faithfully recreated twists and turns of the original “One Cut of the Dead” still land here, but not enough to make this leaden remake seem endearing or zany enough to pick through. By spoon-feeding movie lovers an overcaffeinated sendup of the filmmaking process, Hazanavicius and the gang have only dumped a bunch of pre-solved homework into viewers’ laps, leaving us to keep up as they cheerlessly show all their work.

Now playing in theaters. 

There’s something a little old-fashioned about “The Miracle Club.” Set in 1967 Ireland, “The Miracle Club” stars three powerhouse Oscar-winning and/or nominated actresses (none of whom are Irish) and features period clothing and cars, sweeping cinematography, location-shooting, and a heartwarming message, where each character gets a satisfying arc. Cliches work for a reason. Emmy-nominated director Thaddeus O’Sullivan is alert to details and nuance, which is very important with a script (by Jimmy Smallhorne, Timothy Prager, and Joshua D. Maurer, based on a story by Smallhorne) where the revelations can be seen coming from three fields away. “The Miracle Club” has been kicking around as a potential project for years, and now, with Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, and Laura Linney starring, it’s finally come to pass.

Lily (Smith) and Eileen (Bates) are lifelong friends living in a working-class suburb of Dublin, made up really of just a couple of blocks. It is a close community where everyone knows everyone else, gossip reigns, and grudges go on for generations. Lily, Eileen, and their much younger friend Dolly (Agnes O’Casey) sign up for a talent contest at the local parish. The prize? Tickets to Lourdes, the pilgrimage site in France, a place the women, all faithful and devout (grudges notwithstanding), have all been longing to visit. Each woman needs a miracle. Eileen found a lump in her breast and told nobody. She hasn’t gone to a doctor either. Her husband (Stephen Rea) and a gaggle of children keep her busy, and Eileen is resigned to leaving them. Lily can’t get over the death of her son Declan, who drowned many years before. Dolly’s young son (Eric Smith) cannot (or won’t?) speak, and Dolly hopes for a cure.

The rhythm of this small neighborhood is established immediately, and the tone is warm, inviting, and comfortable. John Conroy’s cinematography starts with stunning sweeps of Irish green and the blue sea, the gorgeous cliffs and rocks, Ireland incarnate. But he shows equal care with the small block of houses and their colored doors, the intimacy of the setting. John Hand’s production design is also a major contribution: the homes feel lived in, realistic, and not presented condescendingly. It’s homey and real.

Naturally, Lily and Eileen have secrets, all of which come roaring to the surface when Chrissie (Linney) returns to town, just in time to catch the talent show. She’s been gone from the town for decades, and clearly, there’s a lot of bad water under the bridge. Eileen can barely look at her; Lily turns her nose at her. Dolly has no idea what’s going on and warms to Chrissie immediately. Before you know it, through twists, turns, and coincidences, the quartet is off to Lourdes, praying for personal, physical, and spiritual miracles.

It’s easy to predict how this will go, but with actresses like Bates (whose accent is a bit spotty) and Smith (whose accent is very good), there’s always a lot to dig into and appreciate. Linney’s character is the opposite of expressive and remains so for much of the film, but there are cracks in the armor as the women’s time in Lourdes continues. Smith, in particular, gives a heart-breaking performance, guilt, and shame basically pouring out of her eyes, even as she struggles to cover it up with an imperious manner. She plays both simultaneously. It’s tempting to say Smith is “unsurprisingly” great, but this should be resisted. Maggie Smith is always surprising; we should not take her for granted!

There are moving moments (O’Casey is very touching), but once the “miracles” start coming, the film tilts into very shallow waters. It’s best at its most casual: the interplay of emotions and resentments, the silliness of holding grudges, the pain beneath the surface of these women. We are also treated to supposedly humorous scenes of the menfolk back home falling apart without their women: they have to shop for groceries now, they have to change diapers, oh, how clumsy they are! Considering that this is a period film, which takes place in a world untouched (so far) by the upheavals of the 1960s, these scenes are still pretty rote.

It’s worth it, though, to wait for Smith’s performance of the line: “God punished me for taking him away like that.” The line comes from her guts, her soul, and the shallow waters immediately yield to deep.

Now playing in theaters. 

The importance of Black athletes in the history and culture of American sports is relatively plain. However, the sports that come to mind are likely ones with either predominantly Black rosters like football and basketball, or ones with pinpointed moments of historical bookmarks like Jackie Robinson’s entrance into baseball. From director Hubert Davis, “Black Ice” is an icebreaking expose on the influence and oppression of Black athletes in Canada’s most treasured sport, hockey.

“Black Ice” is a historical document within the sphere of sports and outside of it, with anthropological context added. The migration of Black people to Canada from the southern United States constructed a flimsy pillar of national identity that believes Canada to be an escape from America’s racism, and this is partially to blame for how anti-Black racism within the nation was swept under the rug. 

Through multi-generational testimony from Black hockey players, we learn about the racism endured by athletes from teammates, coaches, leagues, and fans alike who believe they don’t belong in the sport. There’s no timidity in the doc’s testimonies. The film affords its subjects the same blunt expression that has been weaponized against them, and the result is unfiltered emotional depth that translates poignantly.

“Black Ice” understands at its core the fatigue of Black people used for their talents and skill, paraded as athletic representation of the cities they play for, who are constantly abused privately and publicly. From covert comments like “uncoachability” to equipment managers dressing in Blackface and coaches berating Black players for warming up to rap music, there’s no limit to the casual implementation of violence and absolutely zero room for interpretation. 

“Black Ice” is about Black hockey players, but also contains damning examinations of the ways that sports culture is a microcosm of general culture. Hockey is a Canadian pride and joy, and with that being said, the abuse allowed within it is itself a statement of priority. One of the most horrifically ironic moments in the movie details a white man who threw a banana at a Black player, only to come out and say he wants to move past it and continue forward with his career aspirations in policing. 

One of the film’s strongest tenets is its multi-generational and gender inclusive lens. On the younger end of the spectrum, we hear stories about the monetary costs playing hockey—from gear to lessons to team expenses—that create a level of financial inaccessibility in the predominantly white sport. Yet we also hear cherished memories from the sport’s older athletes and pioneers, who would pour out buckets of water on a cold day to create their own rink. “Black Ice” examines the evolution from outright exclusion to predatory inclusion that took place in the sport. 

Even with all of its jarring plight, what triumphs over the film’s tone is the love the athletes have for the sport. It is not necessary to be a hockey fan to absorb “Black Ice.” The players’ resilience, passion, and grit are the true subjects, and our admiration for the players motivates the film even as racism demands spotlight. It’s a symbiotic relationship, however unfortunate, that paints a true portrait of the culture of hockey, the importance of Black athletes within it, and the greater significance of what our cherished entertainments reveal about us.  

Now playing in theaters. 

No theme is more frequent in movies than very different people taking a journey together. They’re initially antagonistic, but they find a growing appreciation for one another throughout the story. Usually, one is careful and reserved, while the other is an impulsive and free spirit. The reason for the enduring appeal of these stories is the eternal human struggle between the ego and the superego. There’s something funny but also satisfying about seeing reconciliation, even the integration of the two. The set-up immediately connects to us; all we need is some worthy details, vivid supporting characters, and, if possible, some nice scenery.   

And that is what we get in the watchable French film “Two Tickets to Greece,” the story of two middle-aged women who have not seen each other since their early teens and find themselves traveling together to the Greek Isles. As a character points out to Blandine (Olivia Côte), even her name sounds boring. Blandine’s husband left her two years earlier and is about to have a baby with his new, young wife. Magalie (Laure Calamy) lives for fun, excitement, and the triumph of petty cons like keeping the tags on an expensive shirt so she can wear it once and then return it. In a brief flashback as the movie begins, we see them as middle schoolers getting into trouble and laughing about it. 

When Blandine and her college student son are going through boxes of things that have been packed away for decades, she tells him about her old friend, and he surprises her by tracking down Magalie and inviting her to meet Blandine for dinner. She does not tell him it did not go well, so he surprises her again by inviting Magalie to accompany Blandine on the trip to Greece. When she tells him they cannot get along, he loses patience. “You have two weeks to kill each other or patch things up. I don’t care which.”

Blandine has planned a stay in a luxurious hotel on the island of Amorgos, where she and Magalie once dreamed of visiting together, inspired by a film they had never watched, Luc Besson’s “The Big Blue.” But Magalie is a chaos agent. The careful, precise itinerary Blandine had in mind, with a notebook and glue stick to document every step, is jettisoned. Others might make Magalie’s choices because they cannot imagine the consequences. But Magalie is so determined to enjoy every possible outcome that she welcomes the consequences. So what if they get kicked off the ferry boat on a different island than the one with the fancy hotel? No problem! “We’ll sleep under the stars!” 

They end up at a small, rustic inn. Happy wherever she is, Magalie dances joyfully on the patio (and on a tabletop), where the other guests are having dinner. In a very sweet moment, as Blandine watches, she sees Magalie not as she is now but as she was when they were friends, imagining herself dancing with her as they did in middle school.

What elevates this film above the usual trip-gone-wrong storyline is its gentle exploration of what links the two women beyond their history. This is a movie about processing grief: Blandine over the loss of her husband and the life she thought she would have; Magalie over early trauma briefly touched on as the women finally talk about what drove them apart. There is an element of frantic denial in Magalie’s ebullience and prolonged self-pity in Blandine’s unwillingness to move forward. This comes together with the introduction of a third character, who goes by the chosen name Bijou (jewel), played by the British actress Kristin Scott-Thomas (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”). 

Bijou is Margalie’s friend. When the travelers find themselves stuck on yet another island that is not Amorgos, Bijou welcomes them into the beautiful home she shares with a Greek artist named Dimitris (Panos Koronis). She shares Margalie’s view that every minute of life should be fun, but in a quieter moment, Blandine learns that there is loss and worry underneath Bijou’s embrace of pleasure. And there is compassion as well. Scott-Thomas does wonders with this role, creating a full, complex character and adding depth to the storyline. It is as much due to what she sees in Bijou as in the accumulated frustrations of the trip that lead Blandine (significantly re-named by Bijou) to begin to be honest about her feelings toward Margalie. Three times in the film, we see how uncomfortable Blandine is with nudity, her own and anyone else’s. But she learns that refusing to look left her missing important information and an opportunity for intimacy, not romantic or sexual, just a shared understanding with another person. Margalie learns there is value in slowing down to pay attention to someone else. In these gorgeous settings, away from home, they show us that a journey filled with unexpected detours can end up in a destination better than the one we plan.

Now playing in theaters.