Category: Movie Reviews

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.

The melancholic melodies of Donnie and Joe Emerson don’t quite feel of this world. Particularly “Baby,” a song which always sounds like something out of a dream. The duo, who grew up on an insular family farm in rural Fruitland, Washington, were teenagers when they self-released their only album—the wistful, soul-inspired “Dreamin’ Wild”—in 1979, without much fanfare. Over 30 years later, the album got a second life when the reissue from boutique label Light in the Attic Records became a cult success. A standard biopic of a story like this could easily write itself. 

Thankfully, writer/director Bill Pohlad has brought their tale to the silver screen with the same thoughtful, humanist lens with which he made the excellent Brian Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy” a decade ago. While his new film hits all the cursory beats of their rediscovery, including a few scenes of Chris Messina playing their record company savior Matt Sullivan, Pohlad is less interested in the album’s resurrection than he is in the psychological effects this had on the duo, especially on the more naturally talented Donnie (Casey Affleck). 

The film begins in the forest surrounding the Emerson farm. The dark blue night sky is illuminated by the amber lights of their homemade recording studio. A young Donnie (Noah Jupe) strums one of their songs, “Good Time.” Its reverb-laden vocals, slick guitar riffs, and crashing drums echo as the scene shifts to the boy performing on a stage, the audience hidden by shadows. The lyrics “Did you have a good, good time?” repeat on loop until the adult Donnie awakens, as if it were all a dream. 

Throughout the film, Pohlad employs this hazy, dreamlike editing as Donnie remains haunted by his younger self and the broken promise the album represents. At first, it seems Donnie, who runs a flailing recording studio and plays weddings and dive bars with his wife Nancy (Zooey Deschanel), is mourning solely the loss of his artistic dreams. But as Donnie spends more time with his brother Joe (a tender Walton Goggins) and father Don Sr. (Beau Bridges, never better) preparing for a comeback concert, it’s clear there’s more emotional baggage here than meets the eye.

While in “Love & Mercy,” the two Brian Wilsons were played in lockstep by John Cusack and Paul Dano at different ages, the lines between the past and present here are a little more blurred. Jupe’s young Donnie is filtered through Affleck’s memories. At first, he’s the wide-eyed, hopefully teen legend printed by the New York Times. But soon, a more realistic, somber portrait of his youth and his rocky relationship with young Joe (Jack Dylan Grazer) and their father is revealed. 

The director also flirts with flights of magical realism. When Donnie and Joe play their first big gig—an anniversary show for Light in the Attic at the Showbox in Seattle—like a specter, a disappointed young Donnie stares at older Donnie on the stage. Later, the two sit together outside the old recording studio to broker a peace between what once was and what now is. It’s an incredibly effective way of visualizing Donnie’s internal attempt at coming to terms with his own self-loathing. 

It also is a wonderful payoff for how Pohlad films the early scenes with Donnie and his family. Whenever Sullivan gives them good news, or Joe and Don Sr. happily reminisce, Pohlad often holds the camera directly on Affleck’s emotive face, under which he’s holding back a sea of unexpressed feelings—about these shared memories, these “good times,” and his guilt at not only not fulfilling his own dreams, but in pulling his whole family down as well. 

Although Pohlad successfully crafts a complex and tense dynamic between Donnie, Joe, and Don Sr., he fails to bring that same dimensionality to the women in the film, including their sisters and mother, and especially Donnie’s wife, Nancy. This is a pointed failure for Pohlad, considering the wonderful showcase the role of Melinda Ledbetter was for Elizabeth Banks in “Love & Mercy.”

Despite this, Pohlad’s film, like the music at its heart, has a beguiling, oneiric quality. “Dreamin’ Wild” is a rich and evocative portrait of the weight of broken dreams and the strength one can find in a family as unwaveringly supportive as the Emersons.

Now playing in theaters. 

French documentary director Claire Simon appears just a little over three times in “Our Body.” At the beginning, we see her walking from her home to the hospital, past, as she points out, the cemetery where her father was cremated. She tells us the idea for the movie came from one of her producers. There was “an encounter.” Her producer had an illness “that brought her into a female world.” And so Simon and her camera entered that world of “gynecological pathologies that weigh down our lives, our hopes, our desires.”  She jokes darkly that she hopes she will not catch cancer there. 

And then in a Frederick Wiseman “fly-on-the-wall”-style film, Simon takes us into the most intimate, terrifying, and sometimes joyful moments faced by the people who come to the hospital. But unlike Wiseman, whose films focus on institutions and bureaucracy, the focus here is on the lives of the patients and their interactions with very patient, sympathetic, and capable health care professionals. We see very little of the lives of those professionals. There are only two scenes without any patients. One is a very businesslike clinical discussion of care plans and prognoses.  The other is a truly astonishing scene of doctors in a lab, carefully joining an egg and sperm for a couple who need help getting pregnant.

Even with an almost three-hour run time, this is not the kind of film where experts weigh in with facts about health care policy or particular diseases or treatments. And it is not the kind of film where we see what happens to the patients we observe with their caregivers. Every scene is just a tile in the mosaic, not a part of a linear storyline arc. Very occasionally, we hear Simon ask a question off camera, and sometimes there is a light trickle of music on the soundtrack. But most of the film is quiet conversation, punctuated only by the hospital sounds echoing in the hallways and examination rooms. 

Americans will be especially interested to see that patients never feel rushed. No one worries about insurance or Medicaid or filling out forms or not being able to pay for care. While all the caregivers we see are compassionate and professional, at one point there is a protest rally outside the hospital, with angry patients complaining about abuse.

Inside, a teenage girl wants to terminate her pregnancy. A pregnant woman with cancer wants to be able to deliver her baby. Operation scenes (sometimes graphic) show us how the medical professionals work as a team. A trans man has to wait 11 months, until he is 18, to consent to the medical treatment his father will not approve. Doctors find a way to communicate with patients who have difficulty understanding the implications of their medical issues and evaluating the options they have to consider. Some of them are not native French speakers. In one case, they pass an iPhone back and forth to translate. An older trans woman learns she has to go through her own version of menopause. It is time to stop taking the estrogen that has been a foundation of her transition. A doctor points to the places in his own body to help the patient understand. Another doctor uses words that are gentle but vague. “Sometimes the disease can defeat bravery and defeat medicine.” Her words may not be clear but the way she grasps the patient’s hand tells her and us what she means.  

We notice those hands because Simon has an exceptional eye for the small details that illuminate the quiet but devastating, literal life and death moments. In another scene a slight widening of a close-up subtly reveals a wig removed from a patient receiving chemotherapy.  We also see a woman giving birth attended by just one medical professional, who gently coaxes and encourages her. The father is at home, caring for their other children. There is that moment of pure magic when suddenly a baby is welcomed to the world and the very first words she hears are her mother’s whispers of hope, love, and joy.  There are people who hear bad news and people who are learning what their lives will be after debilitating and sometimes disfiguring treatment. There are people who need medical assistance to become pregnant and some who learn that they will never carry a child. 

The patients are very diverse (except that none of them are wealthy; apparently the rich have other sources of health care). The medical staff are all kind and thoughtful. The film would have benefitted from more about their perspective, how they manage the stress of the job. 

Simon tells us at the end that the doctors have many stories, but the patients have just one. Those stories together create what she calls “a crazed waltz of destinies.” And as Simon finds herself on the other side of the camera, hearing her own results from a doctor, it underscores the movie’s most important message that we all dance in the crazed waltz some day. 

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.