‘Between the Temples’
Ben (Jason Schwartzman), a cantor at a local synagogue who is grieving the loss of his wife, reconnects with his former music teacher in this touching dramedy directed by Nathan Silver.
From our review:
Silver is a sharp, cleareyed observer of human nature, and while he pokes at his characters, including Ben, it’s more teasing than cruel. If there’s a mean joke in “Between the Temples,” I missed it, which helps explain where Silver is coming from. He and Schwartzman make Ben’s pain palpable without sentimentalizing it; you see the hurt in the sag of Ben’s shoulders and in the melancholy that clouds his eyes. Yet there’s a fundamental resilience to the character who, while he’s sometimes off on his own, is never really alone.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Bites off more commentary than it can chew.
‘Blink Twice’
After Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat) accept an invite to the private island of a tech billionaire (Channing Tatum), they discover an unexpected cost to their free vacation.
From our review:
To land its horror-stained commentary on sexual assault and cancel culture as well as class and race, it would need a director capable of pushing beyond basic social politics. In her debut feature, Zoë Kravitz is not that director. Rather her film, for which she also wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum, exists more as a concept than a complete idea.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Resurrected but better off dead.
‘The Crow’
Directed by Rupert Sanders, this new adaptation of the comic book series about a grief-stricken, supernatural vigilante tries to escape the shadow cast by the cult-classic film adaptation from 1994.
From our review:
“Do you think angsty teens would build shrines to us?” Shelly (FKA Twigs) asks Eric (Bill Skarsgard) about their love story … but the real punchline is that the film itself is the embodiment of that kind of hollow caricaturization and emo teen worship, throwing vague echoes of Batman’s Joker villain, “John Wick,” and 2005’s “Constantine” into a laundry machine and hoping faded shades of black eyeliner remain.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A missing actor, a ponderous film.
‘Close Your Eyes’
In the latest from Victor Erice, known for “Spirit of the Beehive,” Miguel, a retired director, searches for the actor whose disappearance left his final work unfinished.
From our review:
The new movie’s narrative ellipses, by contrast, are frustrating rather than illuminating, and the whole enterprise lacks the political urgency that helps give “Beehive” its frisson. “Close Your Eyes” has its virtues, certainly, including some pleasurably loose interludes at the beachfront compound where Miguel lives. These have a delicate, unforced quality that creates pinpricks of light in a movie that, as it struggles to engage meaningfully with the past, sinks into ponderousness.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
An action remake with plenty of fresh ammo.
‘The Killer’
In this crime thriller directed by John Woo (a remake of his 1989 movie of the same name), an assassin (Nathalie Emmanuel) forms an uneasy alliance with a French cop (Omar Sy) to protect a woman she accidentally blinded.
From our review:
The direction is energetic, incorporating frantic flashbacks and resourceful split-screen perspectives, and the plot adds several new twists not found in the first movie. Rest assured, this may be a remake, but it’s not a retread.
Watch on Peacock. Read the full review.
Like ‘Superbad,’ but it’s super bad.
‘Incoming’
Four high school freshman attend their first big party and get up to typical teen shenanigans in this comedy directed by Dave and John Chernin.
From our review:
A generous interpretation is that “Incoming” is derivative as an act of loving homage. In practice, it just feels old hat. The movie is heavily indebted to the teen gross-out comedies of the late 1990s and early 2000s, like “American Pie” and “Van Wilder,” which were themselves indebted to the teen sex comedies of the 1980s, like “Porky’s” and “Screwballs,” and it’s so far from an original idea or point of view that it’s hard to see the point.
Watch on Netflix. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
You may think you know this story; you don’t.
‘Strange Darling’
This topsy-turvy thriller starring Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner follows the unpredictable path of a serial killer.
From our review:
Playing out in six, ingeniously scrambled chapters, this headlong thriller transforms a simple cat-and-mouse premise — and maybe even a toxic love story — into an impertinent rebuke to genre clichés and our own preprogrammed assumptions. Flexing back and forth in time, the writer and director, JT Mollner, bets the house on a mechanism that repeatedly asks us to reassess what has gone before. Cunning as it is, structure is not the movie’s sole strength.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A lived-in story of displacement and gentrification.
‘Mountains’
Xavier (Atibon Nazaire), a demolition worker tasked with preparing properties for redevelopment, confronts the realities of gentrification in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami in Monica Sorelle’s film.
From our review:
As a drama, “Mountains,” whose characters move fluidly between English and Haitian Creole, is too low-key to leave much of an impression. But as a portrait of intergenerational tensions in an immigrant family, it is poignant, and it captures an area of Miami that is rarely seen onscreen.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Grief, lost in translation.
‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’
When Chloe (Carla Juri), a recent widow, visits Japan, she develops a deeper bond with her old friend Toshi (Takashi Ueno) in this quiet drama written and directed by Bradley Rust Gray.
From our review:
The meandering nature of the film creates a special kind of intimacy with Chloe, one that relies almost entirely on Juri’s subtly heartbreaking performance. Chloe’s mourning isn’t always legible, and we often see her engaging in banal activities like shopping, eating and playing with Toshi’s young daughter, Futaba … The constant obliqueness draws some power and believability away from the developing romance with Toshi. There’s an implication that repressed emotions are simmering beneath the mundane, but that doesn’t always come across.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Pass the ketchup — and the tissues.
‘The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat’
This decade-spanning saga directed by Tina Mabry follows three friends as they confront tragedies and triumphs — often over plates of diner food.
From our review:
The script, adapted by Mabry and Cee Marcellus from Edward Kelsey Moore’s novel of the same name, takes a few liberties, tweaking the titular hangout into a retro-chic diner, blurring the location to Anytown, America, and scrapping a cameo from Eleanor Roosevelt’s ghost. No one seems to believe this is Michelin star cuisine — the score is clatteringly whimsical, the scene transitions teeter toward the absurd — but it’s a treat to watch these believable pals hoist each other back up, taking the occasional breather to clink milkshakes in slow motion.
Watch on Hulu. Read the full review.
Compiled by Kellina Moore.
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