Category: Movie Reviews

Ben (Justin H. Min) is a snobby cinephile and Japanese-American living in Berkeley, California. He’s the kind of guy who, at the beginning of “Shortcomings,” dismisses the crowd-pleasing Asian action film he watches at a movie theater with his girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) on arrogant grounds. Miko loves the representation on screen, believing it’ll lead to greater opportunities for Asian-American filmmakers. Ben doesn’t see the wonder “in a garish mainstream rom-com that glorifies the capitalistic fantasy of vindication through wealth and materialism.” He can barely hide his disdain for the picture when he meets its giddy filmmaker.  

Ben is a failed film student who spends his days managing an arthouse movie theater and watching Criterion discs such as Ozu’s “Good Morning.” He can’t fathom a world where he isn’t the prime arbiter of taste. Much to his chagrin, however, Ben loves white women. His attraction is tested when he hires the oddball performance artist Autumn (Tavi Gevinson) to work the ticket window at the theater. Will he cheat on his girlfriend, Miko? If he, along with the premise, comes off as loathsome, that’s sorta the point. 

“Shortcomings” is a wickedly funny, absorbing character study and solo feature directorial debut by actor Randall Park (“Fresh off the Boat”). In the hands of Park, Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel (adapted here by Tomine) finds cutting new dimensions in the miserabilism of an unabashed asshole. 

It works because the film fully embraces the wretched unlikability of Ben. Park worms through Ben’s many relationship troubles: He gets with Autumn, for instance, and then turns his sights to the politically charged Sasha (Debby Ryan), endangering each with his caustic humor. Min savors the script’s savage barbs and quick sarcastic one-liners. You can never tell if or when you’re seeing the real Ben. The same goes for the women he dates. They initially like his corrosive wit, believing it’s a charming feature rather than an unfixable glitch. Surely, more lies beneath the surface? But there is no there, there. And Min, who found critical acclaim as the android in “After Yang,” demonstrates his immense range as he plays with Ben’s surface-level features with the exhilaration of a man dancing on an electric fence.

The other major highlight in the cast is Sherry Cola as Ben’s loud, gregarious Lesbian best friend, Alice. The film’s heart is the balancing act between Alice and Ben’s friendship, including open dinner talks and double-teaming at parties. She puts up with his idiocy as he sometimes acts as her beard for her traditional Korean parents. When Miko moves to New York City for an internship, Alice, recently transplanted to the big apple herself, allows Ben to stay with her as he searches for Miko. But Ben is poison to everything he touches. 

While “Shortcomings” aims at identity, particularly Ben’s inability to be comfortable with his attractions—which causes him to default into an oppressed versus oppressor stance—the film relies on keen jokes to make a punchy mood. The tight dialogue runs the gamut from quips about experimental music and international and blockbuster cinema (“Snowpiercer is a sequel of Willy Wonka” is a theory one theater worker shares with another) to gags concerning representational movies and assimilation.

The film doesn’t break new ground in the genre, hewing close to rom-com tropes that’d feel at home in Judd Apatow’s late aught works. When the raw emotional outbursts need to flourish, Park can also slip into less-than-flattering coverage coated by less-than-snappy editing. Luckily, this isn’t a picture that lives and dies on big fights or charged monologues. 

Even when you expect “Shortcomings” to land on a redemptive note, it surprises you. Park doesn’t pull the easy lever. Instead, the film’s ending is far more truthful to the character than you’d expect in your usual rom-com because the happiness of others doesn’t bank on Ben’s evolution. In fact, their joy is firmly separate. Such honesty allows Park’s vision, comedic sensibilities, and fruitful work with actors to remain indelible even in a familiar package.   

Now playing in theaters. 

You don’t need to know that Prime Video’s seven-part mini-series “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart” is based on a book to sense it. With a narrative that sprawls over years and ties various traumas and their associated grief into complex character beats, it’s the kind of thing that clearly worked on the page. That’s why Holly Ringland’s novel of the same name became an international hit, attracting one of our best-living actresses to director Glendyn Ivin and creator Sarah Lambert’s adaptation. Inconsistent Australian accent aside, Sigourney Weaver’s work here is among the best of her luminous career, tackling a challenging role with subtlety and grace. There are times when the pace of “Alice Hart” can be glacial, but it’s worth being patient with its early chapters, which set the stage for a study of generational loss and the horrible mistakes people make in protecting loved ones.

Introduced as a child, Alice Hart (Alyla Brown) lives in a state of constant threat at the hands of her abusive father, Clem (Charlie Vickers). She adores her mother, Agnes (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), who is captured almost as a mythical creature in the early chapters in how a child can view an adult they want to save. Mom can’t be human. She must be a selkie who can escape this horror. When Alice wanders into town one day, she catches the attention of a librarian named Sally (Asher Keddie), setting in motion a sequence of events that will lead to the death of Agnes and Clem, forcing Alice to go live with her grandmother June (Sigourney Weaver) on a flower farm called Thornfield that’s actually a women’s shelter. At first, Alice doesn’t speak, but the other residents of the farm, particularly Candy (Frankie Adams) and June’s partner Twig (Leah Purcell), help her recover.

June Hart is a fascinating character, a distant, cold woman who seems almost put out by having Alice around even though she fights with Sally for custody of the child. The narrative jumps halfway through the season to Alice as a young adult (now played excellently by Alycia Debnam-Carey), and several decisions that June made in that time-leap come to the fore, which she thought were protecting Alice but at a great cost. The final stretch of the season also gives June a disease, which seems manipulative at first, but allows Weaver some of the richest dramatic material of her career as she comes to terms with the choices she made, the traumas that shaped her, and how both planted the seeds for Alice’s lost flowers.

“The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart” is clearly a melodrama, but Ivin centers character and setting over manipulative plotting in its best chapters. He alternates shots that linger on minor details with gorgeous shots of the Australian landscape from cinematographer Sam Chiplin, set to a moody, effective score by Hania Rani. It’s a remarkably well-made piece of adult drama, even if the pace undeniably drags at times. In the era of “Everything is the Wrong Length,” it truly does feel like there’s a great 130-minute-or-so movie in this story. But that version would admittedly lose the show’s accumulation of small joys and how the writers let these excellent performers live in these roles instead of just running in and out of the spotlight.

That lived-in sense really anchors the work of Debnam-Carey, who viewers feel like they know by the time she’s stuck with the very-wrong guy after running away from Thornfield. The final episode forces too many revelations on Alice via exposition dumps and flashbacks, but the young actress sells every response as genuine. Along with Weaver, she grounds the piece in a way that can’t be undervalued, never allowing her key role to spin off into soapy melodrama. The residents of Thornfield learn to communicate with flowers instead of words, and the show is arguably at its best when it’s saying less with actual language, letting an emotional stare or heartfelt hug convey all that needs to be said and all that can someday be found.

The whole series was screened for review. “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart” is on Prime Video now.

“The Rosenbergs were small fish compared to Ted Hall.” – Joseph Albright, co-author of Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy (1997)

Considering the evidence about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for espionage on June 19, 1953, and about Ted Hall, the prodigy physicist recruited into the Manhattan Project at age 18, Albright is right. Ted Hall passed on far more crucial information to the Soviets and was never arrested (although he was interrogated by the FBI and harassed and trailed for years). The Rosenbergs were executed in a blaze of publicity, while Hall moved on to do important research at Sloan-Kettering and other institutions. He “hid” for decades. 

Years later, when his “spy” past was revealed in declassified documents, an elderly and very ill Ted Hall was interviewed by the BBC. When asked why he did what he did, Hall thinks for a long time before answering, “Compassion.” His action can only be understood in the context of his time, requiring a willingness to listen to where he was coming from. Things are not black and white (even saying these words would be treasonous to some). Steve James‘ documentary, “A Compassionate Spy,” takes Hall at his word (a little too much), but establishing what “compassion” meant in Hall’s particular context is the organizing principle of “A Compassionate Spy.”

The documentary is primarily composed of long interviews with Joan Hall, Ted Hall’s wife for 50 years, now in her nineties. Two of their daughters join the conversation, going through their father’s letters, and sharing memories. Joan is a captivating interview subject. The past is still very close to her. She talks about events from 70 years ago as though they happened yesterday.

Authors and physicists are also interviewed, including the aforementioned Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel, co-authors of Bombshell, the first account of Ted Hall’s spy activities, written just before Hall died in 1999. Albright and Kunstel provide a wider perspective of the period, while Joan Hall takes us back to her politically active free-spirited youth. Ted Hall admitted in an interview he saw the world through “pinkish” glasses: As an atheist and a Socialist, he wanted the Russian Revolution to spread to the rest of the world. He wasn’t alone in this doomed hope.

The Manhattan Project was cloaked in secrecy; much was kept from even the scientists working in the labs. However, it was clear to Hall almost immediately that “something gruesome and horrible was being constructed.” He naively assumed that Russia—America’s ally at the time—would be looped into the research. He was a scientist and believed in sharing information. He also felt that America’s “monopoly” on this dangerous technology would be very bad for the world. Hall’s radical college friend, Saville Sax (who plays a large part in the narrative, and his two children are interviewed in the documentary), suggested Hall try to pass on details of the implosion bomb to the Russians. It didn’t take much convincing. Hall was legitimately (and rightfully) fearful of what would happen if this bomb was eventually dropped on actual people.

Two-time Oscar nominee Steve James is very good at establishing the context of World War II and its immediate aftermath, the start of the so-called Cold War, the propaganda of the Red Scare, and the wild fluctuations of the American Left. He uses archival footage (note the chilling “blooper” when President Truman starts laughing in the middle of announcing America dropped the bomb on Hiroshima) and propagandistic songs like “Atomic Power,” paranoia engulfing the “free world” after the war ended.

The true nature of the Soviet system, and Stalin’s monstrosities, were clear for many to see, despite the “useful idiots” parroting Soviet propaganda, sometimes in the pages of the New York Times (see: Pulitzer-Prize winner Walter Duranty). The cynical Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939, in which Russia and Germany secretly decided to carve up Poland, sent shock waves. When Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, the pact was rendered null and void, but many onlookers never recovered from the betrayal. The Halls, however, felt betrayed much later when the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia to quash the “Prague Spring.” It’s important to underline that many people saw the truth 30 years earlier (see: George Orwell, who also saw the world through “pinkish” glasses but was clear-sighted enough to get the memo about what was happening in 1936-38 during his experiences in the Spanish Civil War.).

James uses re-enactments to show us Ted and Joan’s life. While they are gently and respectfully done, they’re unnecessary, particularly when you have as strong a storyteller as Joan Hall, who paints vivid pictures with her words. The re-enactments don’t serve the same purpose as the re-enactments in, say, Errol Morris’ “The Thin Blue Line,” where they underline the unreliability of witness testimony. Here, they are interruptions, not illuminations.

“A Compassionate Spy” is strongest in digging into the archives to give audiences who might not know this cultural history a real feel for what was happening. The Cold War didn’t just happen. It was built by Wall Street and industrialists (something which Ted Hall predicted during his time at Los Alamos). The very recent past where America was pro-Russia was unthinkable in the 70 years that followed. James shows fascinating clips from Michael Curtiz’s 1943 film “Mission to Moscow,” starring Walter Huston and Ann Harding, featuring a flattering portrait of Soviet society as well as a damn near cuddly Stalin. (If you’re interested in a deeper dive into Hollywood’s interpretation of Russia in the late ’30s and early ’40s, pre-Cold War, you should definitely check out Farran Smith Nehme’s in-depth essay Shadows of Russia: A history of the Soviet Union, as Hollywood saw it.)

James’ specific and empathetic gaze is felt in all of his documentaries: “Hoop Dreams,” “The Interrupters,” “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” and “Life Itself.” His interview subjects reveal themselves to the camera in intimate ways, a tribute to who he is as a person and an interviewer. “A Compassionate Spy” covers a lot of ground, and even with some missing nuance and a lack of skeptical or critical voices, it contains enough ambiguity—particularly from Ted Hall himself—to open up discussion on a wider ground.

Now playing in theaters.

Many films that tackle Black stories prioritize plight, treating their characters as inconsequential stand-ins for a thesis on trauma and pain. More successful, powerful films devote their narrative effort to how characters move through their environments. They afford their subjects agency and identity, rendering them as individuals instead of thoughtless symbols of the Black experience. It’s a nuanced distinction, but prioritizing character relays a deeper level of understanding and empathy, which Clement Virgo’s “Brother” executes poignantly.

“Brother” opens with brothers Francis (Aaron Pierre) and Michael (Lamar Johnson) climbing up electrical towers. Francis leads, instructing younger brother Michael to follow his every move. He signals that the buzzing will get louder the higher they climb, but all Michael needs to do is follow his example, and they’ll make it to the top. This vignette becomes a metaphor for their lives as “Brother” threads together three timelines: their childhoods, adolescence in high school, and young adult years. 

The sons of a single mother, a Caribbean immigrant to Scarborough, Canada, Francis and Michael couldn’t be more different. Francis is confident, physically imposing in height and musculature, and a leader among his family and peers. Michael is meek and reserved, a small fish in the pond of an increasingly hostile environment. As Francis finds himself straddling a life of family and ambition while walking a tightrope with a gang-affiliated friend group, the brothers begin facing questions of masculinity and tenacity as they age, coming face to face with the consequences of an anti-Black world in all its forms. 

Pierre and Johnson’s excellent chemistry is integral to the film’s success. They are believable as brothers not only through performance but also through the script’s ability to showcase the symbiotic relationship they have. One’s fear begets the vigilance of the other, just as one’s reservation influences the other’s proactivity. Pierre’s stoicism is a major marker of Francis’s strength against the odds, so when he breaks, showing tenderness and vulnerability, the moments hit with full impact. His indomitable facade doesn’t feel overly constructed or contrived, and Pierre performs each end of the spectrum with touching empathy in body and expression. 

Johnson, on the other hand, is always easy to read, constantly wearing his heart on his sleeve. Though Michael doesn’t intend to be seen, it can’t be helped, and this openness of character is precisely what incites so much love for him. He isn’t painted as a victim but as a dependent. And as we tour his life in Virgo’s three stages, it isn’t until we learn of Francis’ departure (the context of which isn’t explicitly revealed until the final act) that we see Michael come into his authority. He is the film’s emphatic core, driving the emotional weight and expressing it with sensitivity in its gravity, contrasting Francis’s stone-cold disposition.

As their neighborhood sees an uptick in gang violence, Francis withdraws. The brothers come of age during the 1990s hip-hop renaissance, as Michael’s dream is to be an emcee like Dr. Dre. Yet as he grows up, pulling further away from the family unit and into independence, the household is left rocked. Their mother, Ruth (Marsha Stephanie Blake), is a force of tough but tender love. Her ideas for the home are rigid, but her love for Michael and Francis butts against them in a typical head vs. heart dilemma. Blake gives a stunning performance as we view her development as much as Michael’s. From the boys’ childhood to Francis’ eventual departure, Ruth undergoes waves of change she can’t keep up with, and her relationship with Michael supplements the film’s heart after Francis leaves the picture.

Todor Kobakov’s spellbinding score glues the film’s emotional display to its stunning visuals. Played over meditative moments, the music brings “Brother” down to earth while warm versus cool color schemes paint the screen with damning dissonance. No feeling in “Brother” goes unfelt; every element of its filmmaking taps into the heart. As Michael navigates his memory, trying to reconcile ideas of masculinity against unforgiving circumstances, a study erupts: that of the spirit’s resolve and the immortality of familial love. “Brother” is a portrait of Black youth pitted against forces beyond their control. 

Now playing in theaters. 

Anyone hoping that Ben Wheatley might bring some of the exuberant personality and boundary-pushing creativity on display in films like “Kill List” and “In the Earth” to his for-hire gig directing the dismally boring “Meg 2: The Trench” should find different cinematic waters to swim in. Much as in his atrocious remake of “Rebecca” in 2020, Wheatley mostly phones it in here, and he does so on a rotary land line. At least until the final half-hour, when he’s finally free to unleash some monstrous chaos, this is one of the dullest films of the year, a plodding, poorly made giant shark movie that inexplicably lets the giant shark take a backseat to an evil underwater drilling operation. This thing just has no teeth.

Never really allowed to have the winking fun that he is in his best action parts, Jason Statham looks visibly bored this time as Jonas, the deep-sea diver employee of the Zhang Institute, the facility that discovered the continued existence of a prehistoric predator known as the Megalodon in the first film. The sequel reveals that the research facility has even kept one in captivity to continue to study it. Jiu-ming (an inconsistent Wu Jing), the head of the institute, is even convinced that he can train the megalodon, but everything goes wrong when it escapes and … no, this is not just a shark-escape-attack movie, although you’ll wish it was as simple as that.

Instead of focusing on the fugitive meg—who escapes hysterically easily while the crew is focused on something else—the script by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, and Dean Georgaris sends Jonas and his crew deep into the ocean to the trench that the megalodons have called home for centuries. On their way into the murky, poorly shot ocean—seriously, Wheatley’s answer to recreating underwater photography is just to turn the lighting down—they discover other megalodons, but that’s nothing compared to the evil humans who also happen to be in the trench, mining it for resources. Yes, Jonas and his team basically stumble onto an illegal operation in the middle of the ocean, which leads to their vessels being destroyed. A sequence in which they’re forced to walk the ocean floor to a facility is one of the most poorly executed in years. It almost felt real-time.

A few personality-less characters get chomped or blown up but most of the faux tension is saved for Mei-ying (Sophia Cai), who survived the first film and becomes the main creature that Jonas tries to keep alive. It’s barely a spoiler to say that Jonas, Jiu-ming, Mei-ying and a few others eventually make it back above the surface, fleeing the facility that is now overrun with soldiers for reasons I couldn’t possibly care enough to explain. They head to a resort called Fun Island, and almost 90 minutes into this mess, “The Trench” finally gets a little fun. You see, the underwater explosions destroyed the temperature shield that had kept things like a giant octopus away from tourists. Finally, Wheatley and his team get to have a little fun, but it’s far too little and far too late.

Even the action-heavy final section of “The Trench” barely seems like a production that’s trying to have a good time. How do you make a movie about a jet-skiing Jason Statham throwing harpoons at giant sharks and do with such little joy? This is a bizarrely inert film with none of Wheatley’s dark sense of humor or vicious skill with horror. It’s almost like when he found out that he couldn’t make it R-rated, he just gave up on doing anything interesting at all. Cliff Curtis and Page Kennedy develop a strange buddy-comedy-action vibe late in the proceedings that almost works, but it feels a different movie from the rest of the action. Absolutely nothing here has stakes—so many people in Jonas’ world die with barely a nod to the fact they ever existed—and anyone who has ever seen a movie knows who’s going to make it to the final scene.

Of course, that’s not always a problem. We go to giant shark movies knowing that Jason Statham is going to save the day. So it becomes about execution instead of originality, and maybe that’s why Wheatley falls so flat here. It seems like he needs to be able to play with narrative to be effective, and when he’s forced into a traditional structure like he is here then he can’t put his heart into it. He just checks out and goes through the motions.  

Early in the film, Jiuming gives a speech with a quote about how man is only limited by his imagination. Too bad the movie that follows has so little of it.

In theaters now.

The last few years have seen some very thoughtful, empathetic films that tackle the thorny subject of grooming, specifically of teenage girls by older men. These include Jamie Dack’s Sundance-winning “Palm Trees and Power Lines” and Sarah Elizabeth Mintz’s Tribeca-winning “Good Girl Jane.” The unfortunate misfire “What Comes Around,” from director Amy Redford and screenwriter Scott Organ, is what happens when filmmakers lack tact and land squarely in the realm of exploitation.

We meet Anna (Grace Van Dien) the day before her seventeenth birthday. She’s texting about poetry with a man named Eric (Kyle Gallner), whom she assumes to be a college student who lives 900 miles away. She’s all smiles as he compares her to Emily Dickinson. She lives with her single mother, Beth (Summer Phoenix), who has just become engaged to her boyfriend, Tim (Jesse Garcia), the Assistant Chief of Police. 

Everything is going well for the trio until Eric shows up on her doorstep the morning of her birthday to hand deliver to her a book of Dickinson’s poetry. At first, Anna balks at this grand gesture, calling it inappropriate and aggressive. But eventually, his puppy dog apology wins her over, despite the revelation that he’s actually 28 years old. As he walks her to school, Redford hammers home their age difference by dressing Anna in a classic Catholic schoolgirl style garb.

One abrupt cut later, and she’s hiding him in her closet—they’ve clearly slept together—from Beth and Tim, who have set up the kitchen with a very child-like birthday celebration, complete with unicorn hats and a pink vegan cake. This is where you expect the film to explore the psychological effects of Eric’s grooming behavior. Instead, the film zags with a twist straight out of an old-school Lifetime movie. 

Beth and Eric, whose real name is Jess, have a secret history from when he was a teenager and she was his student; his relationship with Anna was all plotted out to reconnect with her and exact revenge, or at least some sort of emotional catharsis. The film is so slippery with its character motivations it’s never clear exactly what his endgame is.

In a sharper vision, the details of this twist could have explored the bias in how the stories of groomed teenage boys are treated compared to teenage girls. But the script only briefly touches on the subject. Instead, it opts for soapy dialogue about unreliable memories, which is just a poorly hidden attempt by Beth at gaslighting Eric.

Filmed entirely in Utah, Redford’s minimal use of settings—Anna’s bedroom, a schoolyard, a forest, and a few living rooms—amplifies the story’s theatrical roots. As does the film’s dialogue, in which the actors always seem to be reciting each other’s cues rather than talking with any semblance of natural speech. 

Icky plotting aside, you need strong actors to make a chamber piece like this work. Van Dien does her best with her underwritten character but is often overshadowed by the dynamic presence of Reina Hardesty, who plays her best friend, Brit. Phoenix is out of her depth after the twist, especially in the penultimate scene, which itself contains yet another twist. Garcia is just sort of there, playing a character whose reactions to the film’s plotting make little sense, given his profession.

As Eric, however, Gallner seems to be the only actor given room to craft a little nuance. He’s charming and crafts a believable chemistry with Van Dien. Although Redford chooses to film these early scenes with Eric seducing Anna in a flowery way, they play like stereotypical young love rather than grooming scenes. After the twist, Gallner also brings pathos to Eric, revealing a very broken young man. It’s unfortunate, again, that Redford chooses to film these scenes with as much flair as a generic made-for-TV potboiler. 

“What Comes Around” ultimately exploits the stories of groomed teens like Anna and Eric without bringing insight into its lasting effects. Redford’s film uses this deeply tragic form of abuse as a launching pad for a shallow psychological thriller without much psychology, a morality tale without any morals. 

Now playing in theaters. 

Although it resembles the far sleekier “Ready or Not,” Timothy Woodward Jr.’s actioner “Til Death Do Us Part” never gets near that level of competence. Instead, screenwriters Chad Law and Shane Dax Taylor keep their audience in the dark, any semblance of world-building or storytelling be damned.

We start at what looks like a stock footage recreation of a wedding, but the Bride (Natalie Burn) looks uneasy. Then we cut to what looks like a honeymoon on a sandy Puerto Rican beach. The Bride is flirting and embracing her groom (Ser’Darius Blain) as they talk along the shore. Later that night, they can’t keep their hands to themselves, earning the judgment of an older couple (Jason Patric and Nicole Arlyn) who tells them their love will also fade as theirs has. The story jumps back to the couple’s wedding night, where the Bride gets cold feet and runs off to a family cabin to regroup. Her groom’s coterie of dimwitted and misogynist bachelors show up, inciting violence. It turns out the “university” that the Bride and Groom joked about on the beach wasn’t an academic setting but some kind of nebulous syndicate of assassins that only seem to kill other assassins. If folks complained that the High Table in the “John Wick” series was too much, at least it’s an ethos with rules. Here, it seems like “the university” rules don’t matter or are only meant to be recited through gritted teeth and rewritten but a few moments later. 

The problem with keeping your viewers in the dark about what is happening when and who is attacking who for what reasons is that you can confuse them, and all they can focus on is the mess you’ve made. Not that there is much else to look at: the action sequences are tough to watch between the lackluster fight choreography and the extra shaky camera work during fights that detract from the combatants. The bachelor party’s dialogue is so unpleasant I wanted the Bride to hurry up and finish them all off already. 

There are also occasional filmmaker mistakes and sloppy one-liners, like, “If you’re so tough, come and get me, you piece-of-shit,” delivered with a deadweight thud. Other questionable story and direction choices make the movie downright silly. Towards the end, a major backstory detail is revealed after all the cutting between the bloody wedding day and the beachy honeymoon. It’s as comical as putting a hat on a hat. At this point, it’s a parody. 

Is there anything worth salvaging if your action movie falls flat on the action front? Not in “Til Death Do Us Part.” It feels as if Burn might be channeling a tough Bride character, a la Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill,” but her inability to move past a scowl for most of the movie flattens her performance. Her main antagonist, the Best Man (Cam Gigandet), is more annoying than frightening, especially when leading a group of dudes with nicknames like T-Bone and Big Sexy. Although he doesn’t have much screen time, Blain as the Groom plays the ominous part of a controlling partner, a confident co-conspirator, and a charming date all in one. He may have the movie’s best performance. 

But none of this exhausting movie’s various elements come together at any point—not the story, filmmaking, and acting. It practically assaults its viewer with its dullness; each punch is a reminder of how tiresome each verbal and physical exchange is. I wanted a divorce long before the credits rolled. 

Now playing in theaters. 

Ira Sachs is one of American cinema’s most reliable crafters of human-scaled cinematic dramas. That description doesn’t sound too terribly exciting, so I should assure you that “Passages” is some kind of time at the movies—a briskly-moving, turbulent, emphatically sexy, deliberately exasperating love triangle in crazy times.

The times in this movie (which Sachs cowrote with Mauricio Zacharias and Arlette Langmann) are crazy, however, because they’re self-perpetuated. While the movie’s set in contemporary Paris, there’s not much in the way of an outside world for its characters to contend with. “Passages” begins on a movie set; the director is Tomas (Franz Rogowski) who’s making a period picture called, well “Passages” (and while I rolled my eyes at this, the doubling of titles ultimately isn’t in the service of any particular meta conceit). Tomas is a tetchy auteur; he micromanages his extras, which means that either he doesn’t have an assistant director to whom to delegate that sort of work, or he’s just That Way. Evidence that follows strongly suggests the latter.

At the wrap party for the shoot, Tomas is joined by his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw), and after a little bantering about whether or not they’ll be dancing, the frustrated Tomas sashays on to the floor with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who’s been hanging about the set. They’re intrigued with each other. Agathe has literally just dumped her boyfriend and is extremely available. Tomas, on the other hand, is, yes, married, but he’s also—well the most charitable way to put it is that he’s very open to experience.

The extent to which Martin and Tomas’ relationship is open is never made explicit, but after spending the night with Agathe, Tomas is inclined to overshare, and exuberantly. “I had sex with a woman. Can I tell you about it?”

Martin doesn’t respond enthusiastically, so Tomas continues, “It was exciting! It was something different.” Hey, welcome to the club, Tomas. Anyway. Martin finally responds, “This always happens when you finish a film.” While “Passages” doesn’t spend a lot of time in Tomas’ editing room, its timeline terminates as his film is about to go to Venice. So there is a subtext that we’re seeing this character in a certain extreme state, but the movie doesn’t belabor it; it certainly doesn’t try to use creative work stress to excuse his behavior. Switching up your sexual orientation is an unusual approach to post-production coping, you have to give Tomas that.

Franz Rogowski’s performance as Tomas is fascinating. The way he manipulates those around him is enough to make him borderline repellent, and Rogowski, leaning hard into a speech impediment and all manner of slippery postures, imbues the character with near-rodent-like qualities. Yet one understands why both Agathe and Martin are so physically drawn to him.

And this is the other thing that makes “Passages” a compelling story: Neither Agathe nor Martin are inordinately weak. At different points in the narrative they give in to Tomas and his whiny ways, but they’re not victims. Whishaw’s character is a printer with a sharp eye and a steady-as-she-goes confidence in himself. Exarchopoulos shows how Agathe gets swept up in Tomas’ off-the-wall enthusiasm, but also demonstrates her commitment to living life realistically, as her action after Tomas betrays her very bluntly demonstrates.

After Tomas first takes up with Agathe—during which time he semi-submits to an interrogation from her parents, which may be the sole scene in the movie that compels the viewer to take his side for even a minute—Martin begins an affair with a brilliant young writer/editor, which he’ll cut off abruptly. The writer, Amad (Erwan Kepoa Falé, appealing and understated), understanding what’s up, tells Martin, “You’re weak and you’re sick. You can’t see it yet, but you won’t survive this. Either of you.” The movie’s ending isn’t nearly so cataclysmic, but in its views of a frantic but winding-down Tomas on his own, it tells you that for all the havoc he’s wreaked, he’s learned exactly nothing. And that will keep doing what he does and learning nothing until he burns out. 

A surprise feature film is a bit of a contradiction in terms, but it does sometimes happen, with Beyonce’s brilliant anthology “Lemonade” constituting the richest and most fully realized example. Travis Scott‘s “Circus Maximus,” which showed in AMC Theaters as part of a special arrangement with the chain, isn’t in the same weight class. On the qualitative scale of movies that were created mainly to advertise an album of new songs, it’s probably closer to the Beatles’ slapped-together movie “Magical Mystery Tour,” which was broadcast in the United Kingdom on the day after Christmas, 1967; suffice to say that if you’ve never heard of it, there’s a reason. On the other hand, the “Magical Mystery Tour” did give the world the title track and the “All You Need is Love” video, and there’s a case to be made that the mere existence of an odd and basically uncategorizable film like this should be supported and encouraged just because it’s so different from what usually plays in chain theaters.

“Circus Maximus” is credited as having been written and directed by Travis Scott, but it’s an anthology comprised of work by a lot of other directors, including Harmony Korine, Nicolas Winding Refn, Gaspar Noe, and Kahlil Joseph, and you sort of have to guess who directed what until the end credits. By the time you read this, the film will likely no longer be available in theaters, though it’s possible that it could reappear as a one-off curiousity or midnight movie. 

The movie begins with a science-fiction-y scene of Scott grappling with a squid-like monster which might represent his own demons (or responsibilities, or both), then eases us into an epic journey montage, with Scott crossing various terrains as if he’s en route to drop a cursed ring into Mt. Doom. His ultimate destination, however, turns out to be the home of a guru-like figure played by producer Rick Rubin. The film periodically returns to their conversations, turning them into a framing device of sorts. The conversations border on incoherent—the discussions about connecting people’s energies and not allowing them to be broken sounds like something a musician would say on a press junket when he’s high and not mad at anybody. These talks are shot with an oval-shaped matte around the image that alternately suggests that the speakers are being surveilled through binoculars or watched by a cyclops (sometimes the image “blinks”). 

What follows is a series of music videos, essentially, some better than others, including one shot in Ghana with seemingly hundreds of extras, a sequence directed by Refn in which Scott speeds in a taxi at high speed at night by a creepy crash test dummy driver while calmly smoking weed; “Modern Jam,” a dance floor fantasia co-produced by Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo; and a segment where Scott takes part in a human pyramid in a packed stadium. 

Scott must know he’s courting trouble with crowd imagery—eight fans were crushed at one of his 2021 concerts at Houston’s Astroworld, though a Texas grand jury subsequently declined to indict Scott or anyone else associated with the event. It’s also possible that the beast that embraces Scott in the opening is his guilt, fear of consequences, or something along those lines. But the movie is cryptic or coy about such things. While this is as it should be, in what is basically an experimental film, more clarity of purpose (as in “Gimme Shelter,” the Maysles’ Brothers documentary of the Rolling Stones’ disaster at Altamont) might’ve made the material land harder.

Surely not coincidentally, the music videos fall into two categories, crowd or no crowd. The bulk of the film is a concert done without fans, repeating a lot of the same tracks showcased in the music video portion of the film, and unfolding entirely in the eponymous chariot racing stadium in Rome, which also happens to be the site of the single worst disaster in the history of spectator sports: over 1000 people were killed when the venue’s upper tier collapsed. Scott performs mostly solo, although he’s joined at various points by such collaborators as The Weeknd and Swae Lee, The collaborators make their approach from the outer edges of the stadium and are tracked to the center area, often without cuts. 

Korine appears to be the person in charge of most of the “concert for nobody” sequences. Like the rest of the movie, this footage is shot on 35mm film, an increasingly rare format, and a lot of it was done from the top of a large crane, which allows for fast sweeping movements that are coded as “epic.” Unfortunately, a lot of this footage is too darkly lit, to the point where you can barely see the performers. And there are also moments where it seems like the camera crew either missed whatever moment or composition they were supposed to be capturing or didn’t know what they were supposed to be focusing on. There’s not much memorable choreography to speak of; much of it is more like bouncing, and the more memorable gestures (such as Scott climbing the huge wall of speakers behind him and perching atop it like Batman) are repeated, which lessens their impact. 

Scott is a powerful presence when he’s walking through landscapes and very effective in music videos where he’s silhouetted or wreathed in smoke and strobe lights, but he’s a distant and often cold presence otherwise, especially in conversation scenes with Rubin. He is generally withholding when he’s on-camera, which spells doom for a performer who doesn’t have what could be called, for lack of a better phrase, a film persona (as Prince did). The guest performers generally make a stronger impression even though their screen time is comparatively brief, especially The Weeknd, who has a bit of Mick Jagger’s insouciance (he’s far more charismatic here than he was on HBO’s awful “The Idol“). This is a curiosity and a career footnote more than a substantial freestanding film achievement, which is too bad. It’s more a notion for a work of art than a work of art, and you can’t expect people to pay $25 (the cost of a special engagement ticket opening weekend) for a notion.

In theaters now.

Midnight blues melt into velvety blacks, punctuated by motel signs, gleaming lonely neon sometimes blurred by rain or snow on the windshield. These aren’t national chain motels. You have to get off the interstate to find them. An old guy behind the front desk hands out the room keys and makes friendly banter. He doesn’t find it odd when a customer pulls up at midnight and rings the doorbell. People are on the move in this massive country, to parts known and unknown. They need a warm bed for the night, maybe a friendly face so the road won’t feel so lonely. Inside the chilly room, pink neon floods through the window.

These are some of the images in Morrisa Maltz’s stunning narrative debut “The Unknown Country,” a lyrical and poetic journey, as well as an actual journey, from the snowy wastes of South Dakota’s Badlands to the humid nights of the Lone Star State. Lily Gladstone plays Tana, an Indigenous woman setting out for Texas after her grandmother’s death. The story isn’t “filled in” until later, but the details are almost unnecessary. It is enough to know that Tana is grieving her grandmother and missing what she never had, a sense of an extended community. She drives across the great plains of America, visiting her Oglala Lakota family, people she hasn’t seen in a long time, attending her cousin’s wedding, stopping off in motels, and meeting people along the way. She’s alert to danger when necessary, and for Native women traveling alone, it’s always necessary. But Tana is also open to friendliness and kindness, as shown in a sequence in Texas when she meets a group of people at an outdoor bar and ends up hanging out with them all night, having carefree fun. It’s not an accident that “The Unknown Country” moves from the cold north to the warm south. It’s a process of healing and integration for Tana, who has felt disconnected from her family and, by extension, her entire community. 

In the corporate world, there’s a concept called “touchpoints,” places where a customer interacts with the company. On a human level, “touchpoints” are those random moments where a stranger becomes a friend, where a person behind a convenience store counter makes it a point to connect with a customer, not because they want anything, but because connection with humans is where it’s at. So much of our world seems now designed to help us avoid as many “touchpoints” as possible. “The Unknown Country” shows us what we’re missing.

Maltz uses her background in documentary to create a fluid hybrid of a film, where real people tell their stories in voiceover, people whom Tana meets once before moving on: a cheerful waitress (Pam Richter) committed to giving her customers a happy memory (the film is dedicated to her), a convenience store clerk (Dale Toller) who makes the reticent Tana crack a smile, and shares in voiceover his long-held dream of meeting a man named Cole … and damned if it didn’t come to pass! There are more voices: a man who walked away from a successful engineering career to run a motel with his wife, a dance hall owner in Texas who bought the place so that 90-year-old Flo, a local legend, has a place to dance every night. These voices, homey and intimate, fill the air as Tana drives. There are other voices, too, on the radio. The contrast couldn’t be starker: the voices of real people doing their best and the people on air, perpetuating division and conflict. Post-2016 reality doesn’t even need to be acknowledged outright. It’s in the oxygen.

The film was collectively conceived and written by Gladstone, Maltz, editor Vanara Taing, and Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, who appears in the film (and also produced). Gladstone interacts with people playing either a version of themselves or themselves outright. When Tana stops off to visit her cousin (Lainey Shangreaux), she is instantly welcomed by her estranged family. The Shangreauxs are still connected with reservation life (the “rez”), but Tana, from an urban environment, lacks that connection, maybe even shies from it. Tana attends Lainey and Devin’s wedding and plays with their child Jasmine (“Jazzy”), a lively girl who loves dancing and being silly. Lainey tells her story in voiceover, her teenage Romeo and Juliet romance with Devin, sneaking out of windows to see each other, getting pregnant so they had to be together. When Devin says his wedding vows, tears are on his face. These are all incredibly touching scenes, and Gladstone easily immerses herself in this family, smoking butts with her cousin outside and drinking beers in a local pub. She feels welcome, but she also feels her outsider status. Tana stares at a picture of her grandmother, taken in 1940 while on a similar road trip. What was her life like? What can be learned? How can she grieve?

There’s a key scene when Lainey and Tana go visit Lainey’s grandfather, brother to Tana’s grandmother. He and Tana walk through the winter twilight, and he senses, as wise, experienced people often do, Tana’s unanswered questions and her need to know her grandmother, to understand. He gives her a suitcase filled with her grandmother’s possessions. A cotton housedress. A photo. These prompt more questions than answers, pushing Tana on in her quest.

Andrew Hajek’s cinematography is awash in colors and sensitive to the nuances of light: cold or deep, harsh or soft. Lens flares are almost a cliche, but not how they’re used here. Light melts or refracts. Those dark blues and floating neon signs, the “O” of MOTEL reflected in the windshield, the monochromatic snowy landscape, and the deep colors of a windy twilight in the middle of nowhere, all this gives “The Unknown Country” an amazing tactile quality. You don’t watch the movie. You experience it through your senses.

Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women” was peopled with giant names: Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart. But Lily Gladstone, as the farmhand taking night classes, was the standout. Staring at her sleep-deprived teacher (Stewart) in the front of the classroom after riding her horse to class and sharing a coffee at a late-night diner … Gladstone gives a nearly wordless performance (as she does here, too), but Gladstone doesn’t need words. It’s all on her face. In “Certain Women,” her face told of a kind of yearning, the romantic nature hidden beneath the surface of a hearty woman who works with her hands. It’s so exciting to see her here, too. She doesn’t speak much, but her energy differs greatly from “Certain Women.” Her character here is shyer, and less confident, and her thawing out takes a little longer. It will be even more exciting to see Gladstone in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The ending scene doesn’t quite land, although the cathartic intention is apparent. What matters is Gladstone’s face, taking in the world around her and all those voices, telling us who they are, what they’ve been through. In the corner of a family photo hanging on the wall of the Shangreaux home is a small piece of paper with a quote from poet Mary Oliver:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

It’s really the only question.

Now playing in theaters.