NEW THIS WEEK (7/17) IN THEATERS, VOD AND/OR ON HOME VIDEO
THE ELEPHANT MAN--David Lynch's 1980 masterpiece has long occupied an unusual place in his storied oeuvre. On paper, it seems almost anomalous: a period biography commissioned by a major studio, adapted from existing source material and based on the documented life of Victorian-era celebrity Joseph/"John" Merrick. There are no red curtains, no cryptic FBI agents, no uncanny doubles or dream logic to announce themselves in obvious fashion. Yet with each passing year, "The Elephant Man" has come to seem less like an outlier in Lynch's career than one of its purest expressions. That paradox began with one of Hollywood's most inspired leaps of faith. Mel Brooks--hardly a filmmaker associated with Victorian tragedy--recognized something extraordinary after seeing Lynch's micro-budget 1977 freak out "Eraserhead." Rather than dismissing it as the work of an eccentric provocateur, Brooks perceived an artist capable of rendering interior experience with startling emotional force. His decision to entrust Lynch with the material remains one of the great producer's gambles in American cinema, a reminder that genuine artistic patronage occasionally flourished within Hollywood's sausage factories. Brooks was wise enough to keep his own name largely out of the marketing, fearing audiences would expect a comedy. What emerged instead was a work of overwhelming compassion. Merrick's story had already passed into modern myth before Lynch arrived. Born with severe physical deformities and exploited as a carnival attraction before finding refuge under the care of surgeon Frederick Treves, Merrick became a symbol of both Victorian cruelty and human dignity. Lynch approaches that familiar narrative without sentimentality. His Merrick, embodied with astonishing delicacy by John Hurt beneath Christopher Tucker's extraordinary prosthetic makeup, is never reduced to an object of pity. Instead, he becomes the emotional and moral fulcrum of a world whose supposedly "normal" inhabitants are frequently revealed as the true grotesques. It's here that "The Elephant Man" unmistakably reveals itself as a Lynch film. His lifelong fascination with outsiders, hidden suffering, industrial landscapes and the fragile boundary separating civilization from barbarism was already fully formed. Freddie Francis's luminous black-and-white cinematography transforms smokestacks, steam and Victorian machinery into landscapes every bit as uncanny as the factories of "Eraserhead." Sound design--always one of Lynch's secret weapons--creates an oppressive, dreamlike atmosphere where mechanical noise becomes psychological music. Even moments of conventional narrative unfold with the strange dream logic that would later define "Blue Velvet," "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive." More than four decades later, it's lost none of its capacity to move audiences. The humanism never curdles into sanctimony nor does the visual beauty overwhelm the pain at its center. If anything the movie has only grown richer with time, revealing that Lynch's greatest subject was never mystery for its own sake but empathy. That may explain why this seeming curio now feels indispensable. It's not merely one of the finest biographical dramas ever made, but one of the essential works in the Lynch canon: a masterpiece whose tenderness proves every bit as radical as his nightmares. The Criterion Collection 4K Blu-Ray includes archival interviews with Lynch, Hurt, Brooks, Francis, Tucker, co-producer Jonathan Sanger and stills photographer Frank Connor; a 1981 audio recording of an interview/audience Q&A with Lynch at the American Film Institute; "The Terrible Elephant Man Revealed," a 2001 documentary about the film; a 2005 featurette, "Joseph Merrick: The Real Elephant Man," with archivist Jonathan Evans; Lynch and critic Kristine McKenna reading excerpts from their 2018 book, "Room to Dream;" excerpts from an interview with Lynch from the 2005 edition of Chris Roley's book, "Lynch on Lynch;" and an 1886 letter to the editor of the London Times concerning Merrick by the chairman of the London Hospital. (A PLUS.)
THE INVITE--Adapted from Cesc Gay's Spanish comedy "The People Upstairs," Olivia ("Booksmart") Wilde's third feature unfolds almost entirely within a single apartment where conversation becomes combat and every joke threatens to expose a deeper bruise. What begins as sophisticated farce gradually evolves into an unexpectedly moving study of marriage, longing and the stories couples tell themselves in order to stay together. Joe (Seth Rogen), an affable music teacher whose self-deprecating humor barely conceals his insecurity, and his wife Angela (Olivia Wilde), increasingly restless after years of domestic routine, invite their enigmatic upstairs neighbors over for dinner. Those neighbors--Pína (Penélope Cruz), gloriously uninhibited and disarmingly candid, and Hawk (Edward Norton), a former firefighter whose calm veneer masks surprising emotional depths--arrive bearing wine, charm and a proposition that transforms an awkward evening into an emotional reckoning. Wilde wisely resists turning the premise into mere sexual provocation; her movie is ultimately less interested in titillation than honesty. Working within the confines of a single location, Wilde displays a confidence that eluded her ambitious but underwhelming "Don't Worry Darling" (2022). She orchestrates shifting alliances and tonal pivots with impressive fluidity, allowing laughter and melancholy to coexist within the same exchange. The camera glides effortlessly, finding fresh performance rhythms in a space that could easily have felt archly theatrical. Rogen gives one of his most finest performances to date by locating genuine pathos beneath his ace comic timing; Wilde proves equally adroit in front of the camera; Cruz lends Pína a mischievous intelligence that keeps you delightfully off balance; and Norton's quietly soulful Hawk emerges as the film's moral center without ever seeming sanctimonious. Adult-oriented relationship dramas have become an endangered species in 21st century Hollywood, crowded out by franchises and high-concept spectacles. "The Invite" feels like a welcome reminder that four gifted actors, a perceptive screenplay and a director confident enough to let the dialogue flow can still make for intoxicating cinema. (A MINUS.)
THE ODYSSEY--Christopher Nolan has never mistaken moderation for a virtue, and the Oscar-winning director scales Homer's foundational text with the grit and determination of a filmmaker convinced that every myth should be experienced at maximum volume (and length). The result is frequently spectacular, intermittently exhilarating and, at nearly every turn, exhausting: a monument to cinematic ambition that's easier to admire than love. Matt Damon brings a weathered
intelligence to Odysseus, the battle-scarred king of Ithaca whose decade-long voyage home after the Trojan War becomes a gauntlet of monsters, shipwrecks, seductive goddesses and divine interference. Back in Ithaca, Penelope (Anne Hathaway) fends off increasingly aggressive suitors while her son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), searches for news of the father he scarcely remembers. Around them swirl gods, kings and mortals played by a cast so lavishly stocked with marquee names (Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Charlize Theon, et al) that one eventually stops trying to keep score. Indeed, Nolan's parade of celebrity cameos becomes its own unintended spectacle. Every few minutes another recognizable face materializes for a scene or two before vanishing again, producing the same distracting effect as John Wayne turning up as a Roman centurion at the Crucifixion in George Stevens' "The Greatest Story Ever Told." Instead of enriching Homer's world, the procession of stars repeatedly nudges viewers out of it. No one stages large-format spectacle with Nolan's technical assurance, though. The sea battles roar, the cyclopean landscapes dwarf humanity and the practical effects possess a tactile grandeur that computer-generated fantasy often lacks. Yet the movie remains oddly resistant to emotional intimacy. Nolan is forever explaining destiny, honor and memory while rarely allowing his characters to inhabit them as flesh-and-blood people rather than ideas in armor. It's difficult not to be reminded of 2024's "The Return" in which Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche distilled the same source material into a lean, deeply human drama that proved more moving at a fraction of this film's budget (and nearly three-hour run time). For Nolan acolytes, "The Odyssey" will doubtless confirm his status as modern cinema's reigning architect of gigantism. For everyone else, it may feel like another reminder that bigger canvases don't automatically produce deeper emotions. Homer survives the treatment but just barely, emerging from beneath layers of IMAX grandeur and directorial self-regard nearly as formidable as the trials faced by Odysseus himself. (B MINUS.)
QUEEN OF THE RING--Mildred "Millie" Burke, a pioneering figure in professional women's wrestling during the early to mid-20th century, is the engaging subject of director Ash Avildsen's compelling biopic. In what deserves to be a star-making turn, Emily Bett Rickards captures both Burke's physical prowess and emotional depth. The movie follows Burke's Cinderella-like journey from a single mom working in a Kansas diner to becoming America's top female wrestler. Her tumultuous marriage to wrestling coach Billy Wolfe (Josh Lucas) addresses themes of sexism, racism and spousal abuse prevalent in the era. To the film's credit, it doesn't shy away from depicting the myriad challenges Burke faced both in and outside the ring fighting for recognition in a male-dominated industry. Meticulous attention to period detail helps recreate the gritty world of early professional wrestling, and Francesca Eastwood and Damaris Lewis (as Mae Young and Babs Wingo respectively) impress as fellow trailblazers who broke barriers and contributed to the sport's evolution. The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray includes deleted scenes, cast interviews and the theatrical trailer. (B.)
STOP! THAT! TRAIN!--For a director best known for the high gloss of "Hairspray" and the sentimental uplift of "The Wedding Planner," Adam Shankman has always understood that, deployed with enough confidence, bad taste can become a kind of pop art. A late-night cable fever dream, “Stop! That! Train!” is occasionally hilarious and almost impossible to dislike--a disaster spoof so deliriously committed to its own nonsensical premise that resisting it feels churlish. Tess and DeeDee, played with shameless gusto by Ginger Minj and Jujubee, are weary train attendants who abandon the drab “Stank Rail” for the ultra-luxurious Glamazonian Express, a rolling fantasia of sequins, cocktail service and interpersonal screaming matches. Mid-journey, a ludicrous superstorm (christened “Stormaganza,” natch) sends the train hurtling toward Los Angeles at catastrophic speed. Enter RuPaul as President Judy Gagwell, striding through the Oval Office in towering wigs and delivering every line as though it were the final punchline at a comedy roast. Shankman directs with the breathless pace of someone trying to keep six spinning plates aloft at once. Jokes crash into musical numbers; celebrity cameos arrive and disappear before you can process them. Some gags land beautifully (particularly a running bit involving malfunctioning safety announcements) while others die sans dignity. The rhythm can sometimes feel less like comic escalation than comic pileup. Yet there's an unexpectedly generous spirit beneath the chaos. Unlike so many contemporary spoofs, “Stop!" isn't built on snark or contempt: it desperately wants to entertain. In an era of self-conscious franchise calculation, sincerity counts for something. (B.) RENT OR BUY ON VARIOUS STREAMING PLATFORMS.
TWO PIANOS--The films of Arnaud Desplechin have always had a bracingly literary texture, their tangles of memory, intellect and feeling recall the emotional sprawl of great 19th-century novels. From the nervy self-examination of "My Sex Life…or How I Got Into an Argument" to the dazzling tonal high-wire act of "Kings and Queen" and the rueful, polyphonic family fresco of "A Christmas Tale," his best work has reveled in contradiction. By contrast, his latest movie feels disarmingly direct: a lush, unabashed melodrama that trades some of his customary intellectual rigor for a more immediate emotional pull. After years of living abroad, French pianist Mathias Vogler (Francois Civil) returns home at the behest of his former mentor (Charlotte Rampling) to perform a series of concerts. Mathias' accidental encounter with Claude (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), an ex- lover entangled in her own emotional limbo, reopens old wounds that never fully healed. Desplechin complicates this otherwise conventional romantic scenario with familiar motifs (doubles, sudden fainting spells, the uncanny pull of memory), but resists the centrifugal narrative sprawl that defined his earlier triumphs. The result is a “soapier” Desplechin where passions run high, coincidences abound and emotional crescendos arrive with a frequency that would have been tempered in his more intricately structured films. Yet Desplechin’s sincerity disarms skepticism; he leans into the heightened register rather than apologizing for it. Civil gives Mathias a volatile, inwardly fractured intensity while Tereszkiewicz lends Claude a tremulous, wounded dignity. But it's Rampling who quietly steals the movie. In a role that melds authority with fragility and calculation with regret, she delivers her most commanding screen performance since Andrew Haigh's "45 Years," a reminder of how much drama can be conveyed in the smallest recalibration of voice or gaze. If "Two Pianos" lacks the dizzying structural ambition of Desplechin’s masterpieces, it compensates with a kind of late-style clarity. This is a movie about return--geographical, emotional, artistic--and the frightening possibility that one’s past might not merely haunt the present but actively reshape it. In stripping away some of his usual narrative bric-a-brac, Desplechin has made one of his most accessible and moving films. No extras on the Kino Lorber DVD. (A.)
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DESPERATE LIVING--If there's a single film in John Waters’ career that can plausibly be described as both his most hostile and greatest work, it's 1977's "Desperate Living," a magnum opus so gleefully indifferent to audience comfort levels that even now it feels less like a cult movie than a dare. Made between the underground provocations of "Female Trouble" (1975) and the breakthrough appeal of "Polyester" (1981), it occupies a singular place in Waters’ body of work, the moment when his fascination with social outcasts, bad taste and institutional collapse achieved its purest, most uncompromising expression. The story follows neurotic suburban housewife Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) who murders her husband during a psychotic episode and flees with her morbidly obese Black maid/lover Grizelda (Jean Hill) to Mortville, a ramshackle shantytown populated by criminals, misfits, political revolutionaries and sexual reprobates. Mortville is ruled by the tyrannical Queen Carlotta, played by Edith Massey with a combination of bewilderment, conviction and comic majesty that no trained actor could ever hope to duplicate. Around them swirls a society in perpetual decay where authority is absurd, morality is meaningless and civilization itself appears to have been built from salvaged garbage. Waters had already spent years developing his cinema of bad taste, but "Desperate Living" pushes beyond mere outrage. Unlike "Pink Flamingos" or "Female Trouble" whose satirical targets remain discernible beneath the anarchy, "Desperate Living" often seems determined to sever every remaining tie to conventional entertainment. There's no reassuring protagonist, sentimental core or attempt to soften the grotesque edges. The visual ugliness isn't an accident of budget but an aesthetic choice. Waters creates a world in which degradation becomes a form of liberation, and the collapse of social order is treated not as tragedy but utopian possibility. What makes the film endure is the singular perfection of its performances. Waters’ Dreamlanders were never actors in any conventional sense: line readings wobble unpredictably, emotional registers shift without warning and any connection to "realism" is tenuous at best. Yet these qualities became expressive tools. Stole’s Peggy is the very incarnation of suburban hysteria; Hill gives Grizelda an unexpected sweetness beneath the character's nonstop vulgarity; and Massey achieves something close to immortality. As Queen Carlotta, she's simultaneously ridiculous, terrifying, pathetic and oddly regal--amateurism inseparable from genius. Within Waters’ oeuvre, it represents the culmination of his underground period before a gradual migration toward mainstream acceptance. Later films would become more polished, accessible and even humane. but none would ever achieve this level of feral artistic freedom. It's a vision untainted by compromise, a fairy tale assembled from refuse and deviance. A half century later, "Desperate Living" remains problematic, abrasive and frequently appalling. It's also quite possibly Waters’ undisputed masterpiece. The Criterion Collection's new box set includes both 4K and Blu-Ray copies of the film; an audio commentary with Waters and actor Liz Renay; "Back to Mortville," a featurette with Waters leading a tour of the movie's Baltimore locations; new interviews with actors Susan Lowe, Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole; a conversation between Waters and film programmer Cristina Cacioppo; an interview with production designer Vincent Peranio; and "Mortville in Revolt," an essay by critic/author Grace Byron. (A PLUS.)
DISCLOSURE DAY--Steven Spielberg returns to the cinematic terrain that's haunted and inspired him for half a century: the very real possibility that man is not alone. If "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was a film of yearning and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" one of wonder, "Disclosure Day" is a sober, intellectually curious meditation on what incontrovertible proof of alien life might actually do to civilization. Kansas City meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) experiences a profoundly unsettling event during a live television broadcast. As strange phenomena proliferate across the globe, she joins Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor), a cybersecurity specialist and whistleblower convinced that powerful interests have concealed evidence of extraterrestrial contact for decades. Their search for answers places them in conflict with Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), a corporate executive whose motives remain teasingly ambiguous. Meanwhile, a former insider turned advocate (Colman Domingo) pushes for full disclosure regardless of the consequences. What distinguishes the movie is Spielberg's refusal to reduce it to mere spectacle: the extraterrestrial mystery functions as both narrative engine and philosophical provocation. Spielberg isn't asking whether alien life exists, but whether humanity is emotionally prepared for the truth. Institutions, faith, media, commerce and private relationships all tumble under the weight of an imminent reckoning. Though often described as Hollywood's supreme populist, Spielberg's finest work has always contained a deep undercurrent of ambivalence. The suburban optimism of "E.T." coexisted with loneliness; the awe of "Close Encounters" carried the price of obsession; the historical conscience of "Lincoln" and "Bridge of Spies" emerged from moral uncertainty. "Disclosure Day" belongs squarely within that tradition. It's a film fascinated by knowledge and frightened by its implications. Blunt gives one of the most nuanced performances in a Spielberg movie to date, grounding the cosmic material in a recognizable human anxiety. O'Connor supplies restless intelligence while Firth and Domingo lend the proceedings a welcome ideological complexity. The visual craftsmanship, shaped by longtime Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, balances grandeur with unease, and John Williams contributes a score of remarkable emotional force. At an age when many directors settle into repetition (December will mark his 80th birthday), Spielberg appears newly invigorated. The result is one of his most thoughtful and resonant films in years, a sci-fi epic that gazes toward the stars while keeping its attention squarely focused on the fragile psychology of life on Earth. (A.)
EVIL DEAD BURN--Horror franchises rarely improve with age. More often they calcify into brand management, dutifully recycling familiar shocks while mistaking mythology for imagination. This latest excursion into Sam Raimi's blood-spattered universe doesn't entirely escape that fate, but French director Sébastien Vaniček-- whose exhilarating spider nightmare "Infested" announced a gifted new genre stylist--brings enough savage energy and visual invention to keep the IP's black heart beating. The premise is laudably streamlined. A sprawling family gathers at an isolated country estate following the death of its matriarch, hoping grief might accomplish what years of simmering resentments could not. Instead, an ancient book (the inevitable Necronomicon) unleashes a demonic force that turns reconciliation into slaughter. Before long, every embrace carries the possibility of possession and every whispered apology the promise of another geyser of arterial spray. Vaniček stages the mayhem with muscular confidence. He has a keen eye for enclosed spaces that seem to shrink as terror expands, and he understands that the "Evil Dead" series works best when the violence is so extravagantly excessive it circles back into a kind of ghastly slapstick. Limbs break, bodies contort and blood flows with operatic abandon, yet the film seldom loses its wicked sense of humor. If "Burn" ultimately falls short of greatness, it's because it lacks the emotional sting and startling freshness that made Lee Cronin's "Evil Dead Rise" (2024) feel like more than another contractual obligation. Cronin found genuine tragedy amid the carnage while Vaniček mostly delivers an exceptionally nasty thrill ride. It's lean, brutal and satisfyingly deranged, if ultimately a little less haunting once the blood dries. (B.)
MINIONS & MONSTERS--For a franchise built on the principle that more is always more, "Minions and Monsters" arrives with a deflating sense of exhaustion. Directed by Pierre Coffin, the latest installment in Illumination Animation's seemingly endless yellow empire once again mistakes frenetic activity for inspiration, piling gag upon gag in hopes that sheer velocity will compensate for the absence of novelty. The cobbled-together screenplay finds the Minions in 1920's Hollywood attempting to make their own creature feature. Naturally they unleash actual monsters in the process, triggering a globe-trotting chain of cataclysmic events that requires them to save the world from a disaster of their own creation. The starry vocal cast includes Jeff Bridges, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch and Allison Janney, though most are given little to do beyond supplying fleeting audio recognition amid the ensuing chaos. The monster designs are colorful, the Hollywood period backdrop is rendered with impressive detail and the animation moves with the fluid efficiency one expects from Illumination. Yet the craftsmanship only underscores the film's central problem: every joke feels engineered rather than discovered. The Minions remain industrious little engines of slapstick, but after more than a decade of sequels, prequels and spin-offs, their anarchic charm has ossified into formula. Coffin clearly understands the
mechanics of the series he helped create. What seems increasingly elusive, though, is a reason for its continued existence beyond brand maintenance. Neither terrible nor offensive, it's merely overfamiliar--another installment that treats volume as a substitute for imagination. Small children will laugh and their parents may occasionally smile. But everyone else may find themselves wondering if these industrious yellow creatures have finally run out of places to go. (C.)
MOANA--Disney's live-action remake of their 2016 animated blockbuster finally settles one lingering question: apparently there is no intellectual property so beloved, so recent or so visually accomplished that it cannot be repackaged into another feature-length exercise in corporate déjà vu. Never mind that the original remains widely available or that much of this "live-action" production is itself an elaborate digital fabrication. Aside from flesh-and-blood performers occupying the foreground, the film often feels as computer-generated as its predecessor, only flatter and considerably less memorable. Directed by Thomas Kail (whose underwhelming résumé consists primarily of filmed stage productions like "Hamilton" and "Grease: Live! "rather than narrative features), the remake faithfully retraces the original's footsteps with almost devotional precision. One suspects Disney wanted a traffic controller rather than an interpreter, and Kail dutifully keeps the machinery humming without ever discovering a cinematic reason for its existence. The story remains unchanged. Young Moana (Catherine Laga'aia), the adventurous daughter of a Polynesian chief, defies her father's insistence that she remain safely on the island after an ecological blight threatens their people's future. Guided by the ocean itself, she embarks on a perilous voyage to restore the stolen heart of Te Fiti, enlisting the reluctant demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) in a quest populated by monsters, coconut pirates and towering lava demons.Laga'aia brings an unaffected warmth that keeps Moana sympathetic even when the screenplay is running on recycled fumes while Johnson slips comfortably back into a role he first voiced a decade ago. Yet neither can disguise the overwhelming sense that everyone involved is dutifully reenacting something that already worked better the first time. The real fatigue arrives not from the movie itself but the business strategy it represents. Disney has become trapped in an endless cycle of self-cannibalization, strip-mining its own library instead of taking risks on original stories. One remake might be harmless nostalgia, but a conveyor belt of them begins to resemble creative surrender. "Moana" isn't disastrous, it's merely another expensive reminder that Disney now seems far more interested in preserving its past than imagining its future. (C MINUS.)
RESURRECTION--Bi Gan’s 2025 Cannes competition entry confirms the Chinese auteur as one of contemporary cinema’s most singular architects of time, memory and dream space. Following the languorous hypnotism of "Kaili Blues" (2015) and the vertiginous 3-D reverie of "Long Day’s Journey Into Night" (2018), Bi advances his oeuvre with a movie at once more austere and metaphysically daring: a work less concerned with narrative resolution than the sensation of consciousness itself drifting across temporal planes. At its most
immediate level, "Resurrection" traces the journey of a taciturn drifter who returns to his remote hometown after years away, summoned by news of a death that may or may not have occurred. What begins as a loosely structured homecoming gradually dissolves into a fugue of overlapping identities and unstable timelines. Encounters with figures who seem to exist both in the present and as echoes of the past--a woman who may be a former lover, a child who resembles the protagonist as a boy, a reclusive caretaker guarding an abandoned cinema--suggest a world in which memory is not recollection but habitation. The “resurrection” of the title emerges less as a literal event than as an ontological condition: the persistence of people and places in altered, recursive forms. Bi’s films have always operated according to a poetics of drift, but here his signature long takes and sinuous camera movements achieve an almost sculptural purity. The extended setpieces (particularly a nocturnal passage through a half-submerged village) recall the bravura sequences of his earlier work, yet they're less ostentatious, more attuned to the rhythms of breathing and perception. Time stretches, contracts and folds in on itself not through overt formal trickery but through a precise orchestration of sound, shadow and spatial disorientation. The result is a work that feels both tactile and oneiric, grounded in physical environments yet perpetually slipping their bounds. Where "Long Day’s Journey" offered a melancholic romanticism, this movie pares emotion down to its barest essences: longing, déjà vu, the faint terror of recognizing one’s own past as something alien. Dialogue is sparse, often elliptical, and the performances are deliberately hollowed out as though the characters themselves are unsure of their own reality. In this sense, Bi edges closer to a kind of cinematic phenomenology, inviting the viewer not to interpret events so much as inhabit their unfolding. Yet for all its austerity, "Resurrection" isn't hermetic. Its images (flickering projectors, flooded streets, faces glimpsed in passing) carry a deep, almost aching beauty, as if the film were mourning the fragility of experience even while preserving it. Bi has always been haunted by the possibility that time cannot be held; here he suggests that it can, in fact, be re-entered if only in fragments. The result is a masterpiece of rare cohesion and ambition that both consolidates and extends Bi’s distinctive visual language. It doesn't simply revisit his familiar concerns but refines them into something approaching the sublime. The Criterion Premieres Blu-Ray includes an interview with Bi and notes by critic Siddhant Adlakha. (A.)
SUPERGIRL--The most surprising thing about Craig Gillespie’s franchise hopeful is that it exists at all. After decades of false starts, abandoned reboots and the lingering stench of 1984's ill-fated "Supergirl"--the one that stranded Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway and Peter O’Toole in a film that seemed assembled from discarded comic-book scraps--DC finally gives Superman’s cousin a vehicle worthy of her powers. Adapted from Tom King’s celebrated “Woman of Tomorrow” storyline, it finds Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) far removed from Metropolis. Scarred by memories of Krypton’s destruction and less emotionally settled than her famous cousin, Kara embarks on an interstellar odyssey after meeting Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a determined young girl seeking vengeance against the marauder (Matthias Schoenaerts' Krem) who slaughtered her family. What follows is part space western, part revenge saga and part coming-of-age tale with Kara slowly discovering that justice and vengeance are rarely the same thing. The cosmic bounty hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa), all swagger and anarchic energy, crashes in and out of the movie like a drunken meteor while David Corenswet’s Superman appears just enough to remind us that this story belongs to someone else entirely. Gillespie, whose "I, Tonya" and "Cruella" displayed a knack for turning familiar material sideways, brings a welcome raggedness to the proceedings. The visuals are often striking, particularly in the gallery of strange planets and alien outposts, and it wisely avoids the digital blandness that's plagued so many recent superhero adventures. Rather than play Kara as a female variation on Superman, Alcock gives her a bruised, sardonic edge. Her performance suggests a heroine who's seen too much and trusts too little. Ridley provides an effective emotional counterweight while Momoa seems liberated by the opportunity to play a gleeful intergalactic menace instead of a brooding demigod. Ana Nogueira's screenplay loses some momentum in its middle stretches, and the climactic battles are more obligatory than truly exhilarating. Yet "Supergirl "possesses something increasingly rare in corporate filmmaking: a distinct personality. It isn't great, but it is funny, heartfelt and occasionally moving. By modern superhero standards, that counts as a Pyrrhic victory. (B MINUS.)
TOY STORY 5--There's a moment in the latest "Toy Story" sequel when Woody and Buzz Lightyear find themselves contemplating a world in which children no longer need them. That question lands with unexpected force not merely because it concerns the fate of beloved toys, but because it hovers over the entire series. After five movies spread across more than three decades, one starts to wonder if Disney and Pixar have returned to this toy box once too often. Directed by Andrew Stanton who helped launch the franchise in 1995 and later helmed such Pixar landmarks as "Finding Nemo" and "WALL-E," the newest chapter serves up a clever contemporary premise. Bonnie, now older and increasingly absorbed by a frog-shaped tablet named Lilypad, abandons her old toys and leaves them struggling for relevance. Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the gang are forced to confront a challenge they've never faced before: technology itself. The vocal cast remains one of the IP’s greatest strengths. Tom Hanks brings his familiar warmth to Woody; Tim Allen supplies Buzz with a mixture of overconfidence and vulnerability; and Joan Cusack gives Jessie much of its emotional weight. Pixar animators continue to find new textures, lighting effects and visual gags within a universe that ought to feel creatively exhausted by now, and the screenplay contains flashes of the melancholy wisdom that made previous entries so resonant. Yet "Toy Story 5" never fully escapes the gravitational pull of its predecessors. While its themes remain heartfelt (the toys once again face obsolescence and reaffirm the value of loyalty, friendship and imagination), repetition has somewhat diminished their impact. The lingering query is not whether Woody and Buzz have another adventure left, but whether Pixar does. (B.)
YOUNG WASHINGTON--Wrapped in solemn self-importance, John ("Jesus Revolution," "I Can Only Imagine") Erwin's movie is less a fully realized historical drama than an extended dramatization of a textbook sidebar. Intended as the opening chapter in the life of America’s most revered founding figure, it follows the young George Washington (waxen newcomer William Franklyn-Miller) during his formative experiences in the French and Indian War where military setbacks, frontier politics and personal ambition supposedly forge the character that would later shape a nation. Surrounding Franklyn-Miller are seasoned pros like Andy Serkis, Ben Kingsley, Mary-Louise Parker and Kelsey Grammer, but their fleeting appearances feel less like characters inhabiting a world than esteemed guests passing through a grade school pageant. The film has a curiously airless quality in which costumes appear freshly unpacked and bloodless battle scenes feel sparsely populated. Rather than evoking the chaos of a continent-spanning conflict, it mostly resembles an earnest reenactment staged at a government heritage center. What remains is an uninspired exercise in historical myth-making unwilling to complicate its hero or expand beyond the limitations of its modest scope. You're left wondering how a story as seemingly consequential as George Washington’s youth could feel so curiously banal. (D PLUS.)
---Milan Paurich
