‘Problemista’ (2024)
The comedian Julio Torres writes, directs and stars in this gleefully absurd, semi-surreal combination of outsider comedy and New York art world satire. The protagonist Alejandro, like Torres, hails from El Salvador, coming to America with dreams of success as a toymaker (his emo-tinged inventions are among the picture’s running comic highlights), but he finds himself trapped in the bureaucratic maze of work visas, immigration sponsorship and under- the-table pay. His makeshift solution is a thankless job helping an art critic (a gloriously unhinged Tilda Swinton) assemble the works of her cryogenically frozen husband (RZA). Torres’s perceptive screenplay scores laughs in manners grand and small, from elaborate fantasy sequences to the deeply relatable frustrations of a boss’s attachment to outdated software. He stages his comic sequences with visual flair — a too-rare quality these days — while smuggling in surprisingly poignant moments of truth and wisdom.
‘Stress Positions’ (2024)
The stubborn insistence, among most mainstream moviemakers, that the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown simply didn’t happen has been one of the most frustrating elements of recent cinema. Thankfully, the writer-director-actor Theda Hammel is an exception to the rule, making her feature debut with this raucous, transgressive and frequently uproarious return to the summer of 2020. She assembles an oddball ensemble of weirdos and hangers-on around a Brooklyn brownstone in the depths of lockdown — chief among them Terry (the comedian John Early), a neurotic worst-case scenarist desperately clinging to his Covid safety protocols, and Karla (Hammel) a cynical massage therapist — and bounces them off each other, creating what initially feels like a blackout-sketch assemblage before revealing itself as a keenly observed portrait of that blurry, barely-remembered time.
There are so very many movies (so few of them good) sold on an image of Liam Neeson holding a gun that one can be excused for not giving “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” the benefit of the doubt. But this dramatic thriller from the director Robert Lorenz is the best Neeson vehicle in years, deftly merging the current, action-heavy thread of his career with his earlier, heftier work. Neeson stars as Finbar Murphy, a contract killer whose plans to hang up his gun are waylaid by a nasty bit of business with an I.R.A. faction. Neeson is excellent, finding the character’s modest moments of melancholy, and Lorenz surrounds him with stellar Irish character actors like Colm Meaney and Ciarán Hinds. But the showcase turn here comes from Kerry Condon (an Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin”), who is utterly ferocious as Neeson’s primary antagonist.
‘Between the Temples’ (2023)
The prickly, knotty humanism and ’70s vibe of the director Nathan Silver and his writing partner C. Mason Wells, wielded promisingly in their 2017 indie “Thirst Street,” comes to full flower in this often warm and occasionally uncomfortable comedy-drama. Jason Schwartzman stars as a recent widower, unable to fulfill his duties as a cantor at an upstate New York synagogue. But he’s unexpectedly re-energized by helping his elementary school music teacher (Carol Kane) prepare for her very belated bat mitzvah ceremony. Schwartzman is marvelously morose, putting across the character’s pain and mourning without asking for sympathy, while Kane is a firecracker, juicing every scene with the kind of electrifying unpredictability that’s always made her an M.V.P. in supporting roles.
The most recent feature from the gifted independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt pulls off a neat trick. Set in an artists’ community in the Pacific Northwest, it quietly acknowledges the shortcomings and insular nature of such an enterprise, without snickering at the people who inhabit it or the work they do. The stakes are low, in the grand scheme of things, but not to the people involved in them, and especially not to Lizzy (Michelle Williams), a forcefully stubborn sculptor attempting to finish a new batch of pieces amid intense external pressures and annoyances. Reichardt and Williams have been collaborating for over a decade and a half, and Reichardt is beautifully attuned to Williams’s complicated interiority; she also surrounds her with a pitch-perfect ensemble, with André Benjamin, Hong Chau and Judd Hirsch making particular impact.
‘Alice, Darling’ (2023)
Viewers impressed by Anna Kendrick’s recent directorial debut “Woman of the Hour” may want to queue up this slightly earlier starring vehicle; the styles are divergent (it’s a character-driven drama), but it’s similarly concerned with the daily psychological labor of simply existing as a woman. As the title character, Kendrick adroitly conveys the sense of a young woman who seems to have it all together — good job, good friends, good relationship — but is quietly withering under the controlling thumb of her domineering boyfriend (Charlie Carrick), from whom she hides an innocent weekend getaway with her girlfriends (Kaniehtiio Horn and Wunmi Mosaku), lest he get … upset. The screenplay by Alanna Francis perceptively replicates the loaded interactions of a toxic relationship, while Mary Nighy’s sure-handed direction capably balances the complex relationships of the nuanced characters at the story’s center.
‘De Palma’ (2016)
When considering the cinematic influences of the writer-director Noah Baumbach, one would likely float the names of Eric Rohmer or Woody Allen. Yet this deliciously movie-crazy documentary, which Baumbach directed with Jake Paltrow, vibrates with affection for the erotic journeys and dazzling shoot-em-ups of Brian De Palma, the stylish auteur of “Dressed to Kill,” “Body Double,” “Scarface” and many more. Comprised solely of film clips and chatty interviews with the engaging De Palma, it’s an energetic and entertaining journey through the work of one of the most consistently thrilling filmmakers of our time.
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