Time stretches and snaps like a rubber band in “Streetwise,” an atmospheric Chinese neo-noir thriller about Dong Zi (Li Jiuxiao), a young enforcer for Xu Jun (Yu Ailei), a cut-throat Sichuan debt collector. Dong Zi does almost everything Xu Jun tells him to do, with the notable exception of staying away from Jiu’er (Huang Miyi), a standoffish tattoo parlor owner. Even Dong Zi’s deadbeat ex-gangster dad (Yao Lu) tells Dong Zi to avoid Jiu’er, and that guy’s not exactly an upstanding citizen.

The main problem with Jiu’er and Dong Zi is also a problem with time and how it passes for the lost, uncomfortably close antiheroes of “Streetwise.” Because Jiu’er was once the ex-wife of Mr. Four (Sha Baoliang), a powerful local mobster, who was previously mentored by Xu Jun, and he owes Four serious money. And while Dong Zi is mostly loyal to both his father and his boss, he also can’t fully repay his two dads. So time moves at its own pace in “Streetwise,” though it doesn’t move naturalistically or in “real time.”

Writer/director Na Jiazuo arranges objects—and people, and places, and vehicles—with a keen eye for visual compositions, even when the people on-screen are only shuffling down alleyways and shooing away bored sex workers (“Want some fun?” “Have your own fun!”). Na also often cuts mercilessly from one scene to the next, leaving viewers to adjust their points of view as his drama frequently shifts its focus without ever really progressing. A sudden, anticlimactic ending feels simultaneously like too much and too little, which also seems weirdly fitting. “Streetwise” evaporates with its characters, who can’t picture the world beyond their riverside home.

“Streetwise” is not a slow movie, but it does move unhurriedly, and so do its doomed protagonists. They circle around and bump into each other but never really try to escape. What if you were simultaneously too comfortable and hemmed in by the people and the relationships that are obviously holding you back?

Dong Zi tends to be the focus of Na’s movie, but his problems are only symptomatic of his seedy, enchanting, isolated environment. Because Dong Zi’s father is the same kind of hustler as Xu Jun, albeit more slovenly and less motivated, and Xu Jun’s cut from the same cloth as Four, his abusive, faux-benevolent former pupil. So it stands to reason that Dong Zi can’t leave Jiu’er alone. She’s also stuck in place, but can’t bring herself to flee or take up more space. Dong Zi and Jiu’er aren’t happy together, but they do recognize themselves in each other.

Time moves deliberately, and its passage is eulogized through Na’s precise framing and hard cuts, the combination of which can sometimes feel jarring, like getting repeatedly splashed with ice water on a clammy day. Ambient noise on the soundtrack also reminds viewers of how lived-in and genuine this beautiful, melancholic hangout movie often feels.

“Streetwise” is one of a handful of recent mainland Chinese neo-noirs, a micro-trend that includes such recent standouts as the sweaty animated 2017 heist comedy “Have a Nice Day” and the neon-drenched 2019 crime drama “The Wild Goose Lake.” Na’s movie does not, however, feel like more of the same, despite some shared generic points of contact. Rather, “Streetwise” reflects its characters’ peculiar acceptance of lives that even they don’t believe they’ve chosen for themselves.

Like many great noir characters, Dong Xi and his fellow Sichuan residents are trapped by designs that they’re only so on top of. They’re not big fish in a small pond, but rather medium-sized fish in a shallow and slowly draining pool. As they circle the drain together, they recognize the beauty and strangeness of the circumstances that have brought them together. This place, these people, this life, it all feels so easy and familiar. How could it ever really end?

“Streetwise” isn’t the kind of movie you watch for the plot, which is mostly incidental. This is a small-scale drama whose emotions often feel overwhelming, though never bombastic and rarely familiar. Because while it is a film noir at heart, “Streetwise” is also very much about people who live in perpetual hope and denial. It’s a cynical movie, but it’s also gorgeous and morbidly funny.

Na packs so many rich details into every camera frame that it’s easy to overlook how time runs differently in “Streetwise,” even when the camera is hand-held or moving. He encourages viewers to loiter with his characters for longer than most of his contemporaries might, but Na also keeps “Streetwise” moving with an assured pace and a rhythm that’s both mysterious and assured. It’s just over 90 minutes long, but “Streetwise” still feels like an epic poem, shrunken down and sparingly polished for maximum effect.

Now playing in theaters. 

This very strange cultural moment in which filmmakers are fascinated with business rise-and-fall stories from the ‘80s and ‘90s (“Air,” “BlackBerry,” “Tetris,” and more) has brought us to beanie babies. Apple TV+’s “The Beanie Bubble” unpacks the fad that turned stuffed animals into collector’s items, making them an absolute obsession for millions. However, you’ll learn little more from “The Beanie Bubble” than you would from a Wikipedia page, and you’ll have slightly less fun doing so. A frustratingly inert film in every way, “The Beanie Bubble” has no POV and nothing to say. It’s a film that never really takes a stance, offers an opinion, or even sketches interesting characters, partly because of co-director Kristin Gore’s (daughter of the former Vice President) writing decision to jumble the chronology and tell this story via multiple narrators. Instead of offering multiple perspectives, these various voices blend into a dull hum in this skeleton of a film with absolutely no meat on its bones.

Zach Galifianakis plays Ty Warner, someone who will obviously betray his personal and professional relationships because there’s no movie otherwise. From the beginning, “The Beanie Bubble” plays with time and POV in baffling ways. It jumps back and forth between the early days of Warner’s eventual stuffed plaything empire and those that unfolded when Beanie Babies became a capitalist dream before crashing like the truck accident that scatters bright stuffed toys across the freeway in slo-mo behind the opening credits. It’s hard to discern initially, but this is basically the story of three women who get drawn into Ty’s toxic orbit. The desire to tell a story from multiple perspectives is ambitious, but it’s ultimately fatal when one realizes that none of these stories have been fleshed out beyond their basic character traits. And watching talented performers get stranded by this inert script can be incredibly frustrating.

The talented performers include Elizabeth Banks as Robbie, the woman who met Ty in the apartment building they shared and formed a quick friendship. After a few drunken conversations, Ty sold his deceased father’s antiques, and the two started a business together in 1986, Ty Inc. Of course, as the company expanded and Beanie Babies were developed in 1993, Ty pushed Robbie aside, and Banks sells the betrayal aspect of this business narrative well even as her character feels too much like a device for the other three. The constant jumping back and forth to early Ty Inc in the ‘80s and the breakout success of the ‘90s is like little more than a reason to pay for more pop music needle drops. And the weirdest thing is how much it drains the film of arguably it’s most important chapters, never illustrating how Ty/Robbie went from dreamers to cynical purveyors of mass consumption because the film is never allowed to gain momentum or track development. It’s one of the most bafflingly constructed scripts in years.

Sarah Snook of “Succession” fame makes out a little better as Sheila, who meets Ty in a moment when she’s not really looking for love or commerce, but ends up marrying him, and her daughters help design the Beanie Babies. Again, that Ty will eventually push Sheila and even his stepdaughters aside for financial gain is depressingly inevitable, but Snook gives her admirable best to another shallow character. So does Geraldine Viswanathan as Maya, the woman who made history in two ways (at least as presented in the film). At a toy fair, she tells a customer looking for sold-out Beanie Babies that they were a limited run, creating the demand for collectors that would drive the phenomenon. She also is credited with pioneering internet commerce, which was the lighter fluid for this craze, as collectors compared notes in the early days of chat rooms.

What story are we telling with “The Beanie Bubble”? No one ever answered that question. The end montage tries to make it about the American hustle for a new trend like NFTs or Pokemon, and yet we haven’t been watching that movie, just a series of scenes loosely based on things that possibly happened. “The Beanie Bubble” is another product from the corporate biopic factory line, but this one wasn’t examined enough for quality control before it was shipped. You should probably return it.

In theaters today. On Apple TV+ July 28^th.

Something is going bump in the night in Peter’s bedroom. Soon, those nightly bumps start to sound like a voice trapped in the wall. At first, that voice scares Peter, but as his parents grow more exasperated with his behavior, the voice in the wall becomes a source of comfort, a disembodied guardian angel of sorts, who, as Peter will soon realize, is not all that she seems and whose advice is not always so pure. 

While the strange and unusual world of Samuel Bodin’s “Cobweb” has ample enough unsettling energy thanks to Philip Lozano’s ominous cinematography, it fails to reach its scary ambitions. Jump scares feel less jumpy, and the twists are predictable. It’s a subtle creeper, but that’s about it, all ambiance and little substance—like a pot of water that never seems to boil. Watch as we might, something’s just not right, and the ingredients never come together into a fulfilling meal. 

The basic horror movie elements are present: We have Peter (Woody Norman), a bullied loner who hears things he shouldn’t and whose Halloween is ruined by two disconcerting parents, Carol (Lizzy Caplan) and Mark (Antony Starr). There’s also a caring teacher named Miss Devine (Cleopatra Coleman) who worries more about Peter’s wellbeing than his parents, and then there’s the otherworldly voice in the wall, whose character is a surprise I won’t spoil. Despite its supernatural creepiness, and yes, spiders, Bodin and writer Chris Thomas Devlin (who previously wrote the 2022 remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) have the skeletons of a horror movie, but not one that feels fleshed out. 

“Cobweb” is riddled with misdirection—things are thrown into the story but never really amount to anything. For instance, there’s the mystery of a missing trick-or-treater that Carol and Mark tell Peter is the reason he is not allowed to enjoy Halloween, and while it comes up once or twice, once that mystery is solved, it just kind of fizzles out. Bullies torture Peter, but no one really addresses them until Peter reacts violently, then they disappear again until the end for one (again, predictable) climactic showdown. In one of the funnier misfires, Miss Devine visits Carol and Mark to ask about Peter and notices Mark has a gaping slash down his forearm. “You’re bleeding,” she tells him. “I’m just doing some remodeling,” Mark responds smugly. “Loose nail. Don’t worry about it.” And just like that, the subject is dropped. He wipes a not-insignificant amount of blood off his arm and questions her. What was the purpose of the scene? To establish something’s off with Mark? That’s telegraphed in many other moments. Was it just another weird, stilted exchange to threaten Miss Devine (what a name) off of finding out what’s happening to Peter? The scene is just another off-beat moment in a movie that feels off-tempo.

“Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” episodes had more suspense than “Cobweb” sustains while getting its answers. It’s such a dull experience, I watched the movie twice in the hopes that maybe I missed something. I didn’t. I just watched a boring movie twice. Starr and Caplan have some fun acting out erratically, and Norman (who charmed audiences in “C’mon C’mon”) plays the part of poor haunted Peter well enough to earn viewers’ sympathy. But this is not enough to electrify “Cobweb” back to life. Coleman doesn’t get much chance to shine in her limited role, but much of the camera time is spent on Peter, often alone or alone in his thoughts as his parents yell at him for one reason or another. For all the “Shining”-like dolly shots, sometimes incomprehensible dark cinematography, and the scarier “Coraline”-like feelings that maybe your parents are not who they seem, “Cobweb” is a dud best dusted away.

Now playing in theaters.