Author: jose

Dazzlingly impressive from a technical perspective but frustratingly dull from a narrative one, “Medusa Deluxe” is an ambitious but uneven experience.

The feature filmmaking debut from British writer/director Thomas Hardiman is high on style but short on thrills, which is unfortunate given that it’s a murder mystery set in the wild world of competitive hairdressing. One of the stylists, Mosca, has been scalped during preparations for the big show; the others sit backstage in their respective dressing rooms, worrying and gossiping with their shocked models and speculating who among them might have been the killer.

It’s already a potentially juicy premise. But then Hardiman has chosen to tell this story in a single take, or rather to create the sensation that we’re watching a single take, which is actually a series of very long takes seamlessly stitched together. Working with expert cinematographer Robbie Ryan—whose eclectic filmography ranges from the crisp black-and-white of “C’mon C’mon” to his lavish, Oscar-nominated work on “The Favourite”—Hardiman glides effortlessly through hallways and up and down stairways. “Medusa Deluxe” feels like it has a lot of “Birdman” in its DNA with its lengthy Steadicam shots inside the mundane nooks of a theatrical setting and its sporadic treks to the sidewalks outside. The frequent mirror avoidance is especially clever, given how many scenes feature characters talking as they ponder their reflections in dressing rooms and bathrooms. And there’s one truly spectacular “how’d-they-do-that?” sequence at the film’s climax that made me rewind and rewatch a couple of times just to marvel at its choreography and pacing.

But beneath all the visual prowess, there is an actual story with actual characters, all of which is actually quite boring.

We begin with the volatile Cleve (a ferocious Clare Perkins), who delivers an extended rant as she arranges a frothy Georgian Fontange on the woman sitting before her. Soon, the camera follows a model named Inez (Kae Alexander) as she navigates the hallways with a towering pile of stick-straight, rainbow-hued tresses atop her head. Eventually, we spend time with the quiet security guard, Gac (Heider Ali), who asks to borrow some wipes to clean the blood off his locker. Flashy, freaked-out Rene (Darrell D’Silva), the show’s organizer, shares a vape with Gac as he debates what to do next. Rene must also contend with Angel (Luke Pasqualino), Mosca’s devastated partner and the co-father of their infant son, Pablo. (Introducing a baby in a Bjorn adds yet another degree of difficulty to the already complex mix, and boy, is he ever cute.)

And so on until we’ve met all the players, heard their stories, and considered their possible degrees of culpability. But regardless of their backgrounds and motivations, gripes and lies, a single factor unifies everyone: There’s nothing to them. Each character gets a trait or two, and quite often, they deliver their lines in such a uniformly understated way it’s hard to feel engaged in what they’re saying, much less wonder whether any of them could have been the killer. Given the gruesomeness of the attack and the flamboyant nature of the setting, “Medusa Deluxe” should be a lot more exciting. Despite the muscular camerawork and some inspired transitions, the overall pacing is slow. And the underlying crime going on within this crime scene isn’t especially intriguing, either.

Still, the percussive score from British electronic musician Koreless adds tension (there’s a cool back-and-forth effect involving a comb at a key moment). And, of course, the hair designs in “Medusa Deluxe” are structural marvels to behold. But it’s not enough to keep this whodunit from becoming a “Who cares?”

Now playing in select theaters and available on VOD. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now playing in theaters. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now playing on Prime Video.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now playing in theaters. 

A full house screamed throughout last night’s Times Square premiere of “Jailer,” a grisly and comedic action Indian thriller starring Rajinikanth, the marquee-topping, Tamil-speaking septuagenarian and self-advertised “Super Star.” Or at least, everybody alive in that auditorium seemed to be cheering for Rajinikanth.

Rajinikanth (“Robot,” “Kaala”) is now 72 years old. His “Jailer” character, a retired cop and prison warden named Muthu “Tiger” Pandian, has a sassy young grandson and a knack for murdering villains. Beheadings and fatal stabbings are a Muthu specialty. He also has a vast network of shady old friends, played by a deep bench of Indian character actors and fellow leading men, who also help Muthu to kill the bad men who threaten his family.

In “Jailer,” the bad men are led by Varman (Vinayakan), a manic crime boss who kidnaps Muthu’s adult son Arjun (Vasanth Ravi), also a cop, and threatens to behead Arjun’s grandson Rithvik (Rithvik Jothi Raj), an aspiring YouTube star, while Rithvik and Muthu get ice cream. Varman’s men taunt Muthu by doing a grotesque dance of joy in the street. He retaliates by hacking at some of them with a gigantic blade: “After a point I don’t talk, I slash.” If you come to “Jailer” for anything but Rajinikinath, you will probably leave disappointed.

“Jailer” simultaneously is and isn’t a typical Rajinikanth vehicle. It’s more self-conscious and more committed than some of his other recent vehicles, as far as reconciling the tonal whiplash banked into the Indian cinema’s kitchen sink, mass-audience-minded masala style. The makers of “Jailer” toggle between emotional registers with confidence and alarming frequency, like whenever Muthu helps Rithvik film a gardening program for his YouTube channel, and then resumes his bloody feud with Varman. In a musical montage that only makes sense after a long-delayed plot twist, Muthu and Rithvik bask in each other’s company while an acoustic guitar plays and a singer paints a sunny picture of a man who, in Rithvik, also sees “my leader … my son.” Meanwhile, Arjun tortures one of Varman’s men, and also orders a fellow cop to not give water to his blood-soaked victim. The acoustic guitarist never takes a break.

The persistent extremity of Varman’s character-defining violence also gives old man Rajinikanth a mandate to be merciless. It’s sometimes even touching to see him match Varman since, as our antihero’s theme song boasts, “He will make your next generation dance to his tunes.” Rajinikanth is perhaps unusual when compared to, say, a Sylvester Stallone or a Steven Seagal, in that he still attracts the sort of young idolatrous filmmakers who all seem obsessed with making the now biologically mature star look eternally iconic. A friend who saw “Jailer” in Los Angeles last night joked about how many times Rajinikanth enters a new room with dramatic flair. In Times Square, each new slow-motion turn to the camera was met with screams. So were Rajinikanth’s lusty action scenes, especially when he finally notices Varman’s barrels of sulphuric acid.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if director Nelson Dilipkumar knows what he’s doing, either with his star or this movie’s volatile mix of tones and styles. “Beast,” Dilipkumar’s loopy third-generation “Die Hard” clone, gives some helpful context since “Beast” pits the relatively young four-quadrant star Vijay against a shopping mall full of terrorists, one of whom he also beheads. In “Jailer,” Muthu is an older man with a legacy to consider. On-screen, Rajinikanth occasionally bumps his head against his emotional range’s low ceiling, like when Muthu cries about Arjun’s fate. In this scene, Rajinikanth leans as hard into his angles as he does whenever Muthu loses it and cackles like a lunatic with a secret.

Before an “INTERMISSION” intertitle flashed across the screen—they never pause for intermission at the AMC Empire 25—Muthu tells us that now that he’s got nothing to lose, he can stop juggling three different faces and just wear one. He says this to his family members after he warns them to stay perfectly still, so that he and his action-pose-ready friends can pick off some more bad men. After the “INTERMISSION” title, there’s an extensive new subplot involving an extra-marital affair, a bad toupee, the comedian Sunil, and the starlet Tamannaah Bhatia. Everybody acts as a version of themselves in “Jailer,” but only Rajinikanth’s performance pulls everything together by sheer willpower.

Rajinikanth is 72 years old, so it’s weirdly moving to see that, every two or three years, he can still crank out a freewheeling star vehicle as vigorous and exhausting as “Jailer.” Just outside theater 25, I overheard a 40-something year old man ask an older companion what he thought about “Jailer.” I couldn’t make out the older fellow’s response, but his chuckle and little shake of the head suggested that he was still enjoying Rajinikanth’s eternal summer.

In theaters now.    

Director Peter Berg approaches Netflix’s six-episode “Painkiller” with an almost frantic style. There’s an urgency here in his telling of the origin of the opioid crisis in this country that’s admirable given the damage still being caused by Purdue Pharma, but ultimately shallow. Every episode of the series opens with shots of loved ones of people whose addiction led to their deaths in which they read the boilerplate “fictionalized” disclaimer and then pay homage to “what wasn’t fictionalized” in their life. It’s an effective reminder of the truth at the core of what “Painkiller” seeks to unpack—how greed destroyed lives—but the thin characters, aggressive filmmaking choices, and complete lack of subtlety means that every episode fails to find the right tone for its heartbreaking overtures.

“Painkiller,” developed by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster (co-writers of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) from a New Yorker article by Patrick Radden Keefe and Barry Meier’s Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic, moves down four intertwining tracks. The central one belongs to U.S. Attorney’s Office investigator Edie Flowers (an appropriately enraged Uzo Aduba), who is being interviewed by a law firm planning a civil suit against Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. She basically narrates the show that follows, telling the story of how pain medication forever altered the American landscape.

Of course, this means Richard Sackler (Matthew Broderick), the Dr. Frankenstein of this monster, has to be a major character, along with his cadre of creeps, including brother Raymond (Sam Anderson) and the other suits who placed profit over caution. Broderick’s take on Sackler is similar (but less effective) to Michael Stuhlbarg’s in “Dopesick,” the award-winning Hulu series that told a similar tale—a kind of sociopathic disengagement with the world. A few flashbacks reveal an abusive father for Richard, and it’s almost implied that that trauma broke him. If there’s a fire in the eyes of Aduba, there’s nothing but ice in Broderick’s.

A battle of wills between Edie and the Sacklers might have been enough for a feature film version of “Painkiller,” but this is a Netflix mini-series—so we need two more. The better of the pair is the “case study” arc of Glen Kryger (Taylor Kitsch), a mechanic who suffers a brutal accident in the premiere that leads to his addiction to OxyContin. Kitsch, an underrated actor in general, does good work here, but it’s ultimately a vein of the series that’s too thin. It’s admirable to highlight the human cost of Richard Sackler’s decisions on so many average people that he never even considered. Still, the rest of “Painkiller” is so frenetic that the Kryger material feels exploitative and manipulative. Because of Kitsch and Carolina Batrczak’s work as his wife, parts of the Kryger arc are undeniably moving. But it’s too predictably manipulative in its writing, like watching a slow-motion car crash.

Berg uses a totally different filmmaking style with Britt (Dina Shihabi) and Shannon (a promising West Duchovny, who seems like she could have handled more challenging material), a pair of Purdue Pharma salespeople who discover there’s a lot of money to be made in pushing drugs on smalltown doctors. Shihabi’s Britt is already a shark when we meet her, and she’s playing to the back seats, sketching her character like someone who never realized “The Wolf of Wall Street” was about a bad dude. Duchovny gets a little more subtlety as the new girl who will obviously learn the hard way that she’s part of a corrupt system, but this arc lacks subtlety at every turn. It’s the kind of show that drops people partying to Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” at a Purdue Pharma corporate event, one episode after actually using Iggy Pop’s “Candy” on the soundtrack. Get it? The drugs are like candy.

It feels like the pitch for “Painkiller” was “The Big Short” for the opioid crisis, but that near-satirical tone is almost impossible to maintain for six hours across multiple character arcs, some of which never intersect. “This isn’t just about a pill that killed a lot of people,” says Edie. “It’s bigger than that.” She’s speaking for the filmmakers, who center their intention to tell the “bigger” story in every episode, but too often forget the “people.”

Now playing on Netflix.

In 2020’s “The Mole Agent,” the Chilean director Maite Alberdi got an elderly investigator into a nursing home and filmed his attempts to uncover potential abuse there. The residents of the senior facility were told that they were to be the subjects of a documentary. Which was true, but definitely in a different way than they clearly believed, on the evidence of the movie itself. By the end of the picture, I was asking myself whether the tender and compassionate portraits of old folks in need the movie presented actually justified the arguable ethical breach committed by the filmmaker and his lead performer, who took on the title role.

Alberdi’s new movie, something like a straight-up documentary rather than a drama hybrid, is even more intimate, so much so that almost all of its running time it only puts two people in the frame. Two prominent people—at least in their home country. Augusto Góngora was a television newscaster and interviewer from the early 1970s onward; he also produced films and books and acted in a miniseries for the great Raul Ruiz. His wife, Paulina Urrutia, 17 years his junior, is an actress with a solid filmography, not much of which has traveled to the United States. Alberdi’s movie chronicles their life together as they cope with Góngora’s condition, Alzheimer’s disease. 

Hoo boy. Having lost two reasonably close relatives to the condition and one other family member still dealing with it, I consider Alzheimer’s a particularly hateful ailment. And as you might imagine, my reflexive reaction to a documentary such as “The Eternal Memory” might be to recoil from an open flame. This is despite having gotten a lot out of the harrowing fictional journeys undertaken by Michel Haneke with “Amour” and Gaspar Noe with “Vortex.” And, of course, I should know better here, too. Because even in a documentary, what makes the subject matter resonate if at all, is how it’s framed. And Alberdi frames this movie around the ethos that Gongora stressed while he was a journalist. 

Because, if you haven’t been connecting the dots already, Góngora was at his job for the Pinochet regime. And reported its abuses, insofar as he was permitted and/or able, and then continued to dig into those abuses after Pinochet was put out of power. For Góngora, national memory—the refusal to forget the crimes of its rulers and their henchmen in the military and the police (which under Pinochet were pretty much one and the same)—is crucial. This makes his loss of personal memory all the more tragic and galvanic. 

Much of the movie was shot, of course, during the height of the Covid pandemic, which meant that Alberdi himself wasn’t even in the room with the couple. Camera work in many of the contemporary scenes was done by Urrutia, who is a kind, and infinitely patient, spouse—and also sometimes kind of focus-challenged, not that it ultimately matters. 

Among the more vexing effects of Alzheimer’s goes beyond memory loss. Often the sufferer just has no idea of where they are, or what they’re doing there. “Where are my friends,” Góngora laments in a late-night rant, one of the sort that can sometimes take hours to pull a patient out of.   

These and many other moments are painful to watch. And they do make one wonder, again, about whether one ought to be watching them at all. There’s no narration in this movie, no text explaining when Góngora was diagnosed. (Or, for that matter, when and how he gave his consent to be filmed. Not that I doubt he did—before his condition deteriorates he acknowledges that he’s involved in a documentary—but it would be useful information.) We piece together Góngara’s relationship with Urrutia through often poignant-in-hindsight archival footage. It’s not until rather late in the movie that we learn Góngara has two children from a prior relationship, and we never find out how that relationship resolved. 

Instead, we are witness to the degeneration of a noble mind and an interrogative soul. “I’m not myself anymore,” Góngara says to Urrutia late in the movie. “I think you are,” she responds. “No,” he says. And he repeats that word several times. We’re left with the question of what a person can hang on to when everything about their identity and values leaves them. 

The coldness of corporate America is a much-explored cinematic landscape. The hierarchical dynamics within business spaces lend plenty of opportunity for satirical examination. Whether it’s a horror spin (“Mayhem” “The Belko Experiment”), or flat-out comedies (“The Office” “Horrible Bosses”), social climbing and capitalist Darwinism are ripe themes for the picking. Joachim Back’s feature debut, “Corner Office,” based on Jonas Karlsson’s novel The Room, is a stab at a Kafka-esque addition to the canon. 

Orson (Jon Hamm) is the newest employee at the cheekily-named The Authority. He’s a typical benumbed office cog with a muted brown suit and flat disposition to boot. Working in the offices of The Authority, he encounters gossipy, unfriendly coworkers and a droning boss. He doesn’t mind as long as he sticks to his schedule and completes his tasks. His cyclical respite, which manifests in scheduled breaks during the day, involve leaving the communal cubicle area and taking time to think in the corner office that he discovers across from the elevator. 

In contrast to the white, fluorescent, geometric, design of the group’s workspace, the corner office is a mid-century modern dream. Where the main space is a poster of sterility (down to hospital-blue shoe covers worn by the employees to protect the floor), stunning wood-paneled walls, a large executive desk, and a perfectly curated record collection bathe the corner office in warmth and invitation. Not only does Orson find the room to be an ideal space to recharge, but he comes to find that he can only excel at his job when working within its walls. However, this habitation creates a hostile work environment once he is confronted by his coworkers about the fact that the room he frequents does not exist. 

“Corner Office” nails its intended energy. The dystopian visual tone is apparent throughout. With The Authority’s office building being an isolated brutalist high rise set off a snowed-in parking lot filled with identical cars, it’s clear that the film is built on the feeling of stark neutrality. This coldness is an accessory to that of the script, which largely consists of voiceovers of Orson’s inner dialogue. These voiceovers also serve as the core of the film’s comedic chops. 

Orson is marked by his detachment and rigidity, but also his arrogance. Much of this social distance is intentional, as he simply has no interest in his coworkers, but there is also plenty of evidence to suggest that Orson does not understand people. His inner dialogue is delivered exceptionally by Hamm, with dry monotony and unempathetic social observations and notes on the status quo reminiscent of “American Psycho.” However, these voiceovers quickly devolve from being the film’s comedic center to its crutch. 

The humor of “Corner Office” quickly grows tired. The structure and delivery are stagnant, and it drags the film into restless territory by the time it’s only halfway through. The question of whether the room exists, and what the answer means for the characters, is what holds investment, but the runtime becomes tedious while we wait out the reveal. 

Back’s filmic thesis is there, but it isn’t fully realized. The script packs punchlines, but eventually fizzles out, and the film itself wavers while trying to keep the peace between its promise and its lack of substance. “Corner Office” is a sometimes-funny satire stuffed with capitalist ennui, but it bites with dull teeth, failing to provide enough support for its sentiment to stick.

On demand and in limited theatrical release now.

Pregnancy makes you pragmatic. Yes, your body is bulging and your hormones are raging and anxiety is plaguing you over the great unknown of it all, especially if you’re expecting your first child like Oksana Cherkashyna’s Irka is in the Ukrainian drama “Klondike.”

But someone’s still got to milk the cow and dust the cabinets and do all the canning for winter—and that someone is you. The fact that Irka must maintain all these mundane tasks in the midst of increasing instability—she lives in Eastern Ukraine on the Russian border at the start of the Donbas war in 2014—provides both the absurd conflict and dark humor in writer/director/editor Maryna Er Gorbach’s film. Irka is performing all these chores, for example, in an already modest house where the living room wall now has been blown wide open, the accidental target of an errant mortar blast. This adds a degree of difficulty in keeping a tidy home.

Cherkashyna gives a stoic and steely performance, and Er Gorbach lingers over her quietly determined features in the kinds of long, single takes she favors throughout her understated film. “Klondike” is a patient and observant movie, giving us time to notice the small details in the rundown but functional house Irka shares with her husband, Tolik (Serhii Shadrin), or the way afternoon clouds play across the barren, rural landscape as Irka stomps away in frustration, seeking a moment of peace. Working with cinematographer Sviatoslav Bulakovskyi, Er Gorbach skillfully uses steady pans and slow zooms – both in and out – to reveal devastating details as the film reaches its dramatic conclusion.

The situation is already stressful at Irka and Tolik’s meager farm when Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 plummeted from the sky en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, killing the nearly 300 people on board. (“Klondike” is inspired by true events.) The crash was the work of Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists, one of which Tolik is on the verge of becoming himself. This heightens the tension in his marriage with Irka, which ranges from perturbed teasing to tearful screaming. “They bombed the stroller. Where will I put my child?” Irka wonders aloud in a way that straddles the line between wry humor and dire need.

But because she is about to give birth so soon, everyone is trying to get her out of the house and into a hospital. This includes the mostly useless Tolik and her concerned brother, Yaryk (Oleh Shcherbyna), whose suspicions about Tolik’s alliances are growing. Irka insists on staying put, despite the danger surrounding her. Er Gorbach’s film becomes more harrowing but maintains a matter-of-fact tone, which makes the fear feel even starker. The subtle, deep strings of Zviad Mgebry’s score enhance the haunting atmosphere. The crunch of truck tires carrying tanks into town and the shrill crow of a rooster in the distance pierce the quiet. Anything could happen at any moment, but you get the sense that Irka is prepared to withstand it.

This is especially evident in the film’s lengthy final shot, which provides a fascinating juxtaposition between total disregard for human life and the possibility of hope for the future. When Cherkashyna lets the emotions flow, she reveals such a deep reservoir of pain that it’s startling. Er Gorbach’s film may feel too slow and restrained at times, but moments like this in which she lets her powerful imagery play out in unadorned fashion show why this was such a wise choice. And while this particular story takes place nearly a decade ago, it remains unfortunately timely as Russia’s horrific war in Ukraine rages on; “Klondike” helps put a specific, vivid face on a faraway conflict.

Now playing in theaters. 

Usually, when a road movie sticks you with two characters, you’re supposed to like at least one of them. Carter Smith’s “The Passenger” bravely denies this comfort as part of its queasy, then curious, then underwhelming embrace of extremes. One character is Randy (Johnny Berchtold), a legendary pushover and fast food employee who would rather swallow bites of a force-fed, day-old cheeseburger than stand up to a bully co-worker. The other man is Randy’s silent co-worker Benson (Kyle Gallner), who then shoots up the Bayou burger spot, killing all his co-workers except Randy. After making him hide the bodies in the freezer, Benson lets Randy live but forces him to come along. 

Benson and Randy are incredibly striking contrasts as these nightmarish characters, intriguing conceits of this Blumhouse project not sticking to the rules in part because it’s going straight to the modern grindhouses of streaming anyway. Much of the movie relies on their odd pairing after such an abhorrent opening scene and in place of any greater tension. It’s not about waiting for justice or that gibberish about “being a man.” The control that Benson has over Randy as they drive around is not asserted by a smart plan but rather the dominating sense of power Randy has seceded. Benson doesn’t really have to consider whether he’s setting himself up by being near a phone or an open field. He knows to his core that Randy won’t challenge him, won’t call for help. And he doesn’t. 

The script by Jack Stanley toys with this dynamic for a long while, eventually running out of ways to vocalize its initial boldness. But it has a do-or-die commitment to this knowingly frustrating character dynamic, a deconstruction of an adult who is as spineless as one can believe, another provocation from this tale meant to mirror a more relatable, psychological reality. Randy eventually trickles out to Benson about why he is, to put it politely, such a decision-averse wuss. Blinded by his frustrations from such passivity, Benson decides he will help Randy face the people he fears—the girlfriend who dumped him after her cat died, and the teacher he accidentally half-blinded in second grade. 

The main spectacle from these scenes comes from its two performances of physical opposites: Berchtold hardly squirms as his captor pushes him along and gives a believable voice to his frailty beyond tears that are at the ready. Meanwhile, Benson is always buzzing with adrenaline, anger, and god knows what else, from Gallner’s fingers and in a few carefully placed and thankfully brief monologues. It should be noted that “The Passenger” does not turn Randy into the Magical Mass Shooter. 

“The Passenger” lacks a greater plan, but such a journey is compelling more thanks to its various inspired pieces. Cinematographer Lyn Moncrief has numerous striking compositions that readily use negative space and the movie’s growingly cryptic color palette, and such shots are given a bite by Eric Nagy’s editing, who uses them like individual statements from the film’s lurking notions of fear, control, and trauma. Smith’s direction, in general, maintains an air of being off-kilter, like with the fluffy sweater Benson dons midway through or the blast of neon purple that fills a climactic diner scene. 

Even if this movie doesn’t achieve a great epiphany at the end of the darkest route, it offers a great showcase for Gallner in particular. He has the playful intensity of Jack Nicholson without ever aping the legend’s grin. Nor does Gallner overplay the imposing presence Benson readily assumes, especially as the story has Benson leaning over Randy’s shoulder as he meets with these two people from his past who have made him fearful. Gallner has such an ease in the role; he can do so much else, as we’ve seen from his previous films, but he’s a natural with the unnatural. “The Passenger” projects a future for Gallner of roles that may not win Oscars, but they’ll be far more exciting and daring than that. 

Now playing on digital platforms and available on demand.