Critic's Notebook

Blind Faith

Hiba Khodr

MOVIE REVIEW
Q (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

It’s a sad truth that a great many Americans have had to witness their parents become swallowed by an organization called Q which tells them what to think and how to think it, but not quite like this. This documentary is about Lebanese-American director Jude Chehab’s mother, Hiba Khodr, who has devoted her entire adult life to a secretive all-female religious order in Lebanon, Q for short, run by a leader referred to as the Anisa. Ms. Chehab’s generally normal middle-class life has been in the shadow of her mother’s relationship with the sect, which has been the dominate relationship of Ms. Khodr’s life, as Ms. Chehab’s father, Ziad Chehab, knows only too well. This is a riveting attempt to explain why Ms. Khodr chose to hand over her life to this order, and to attempt to unpick the consequences of this choice.

The Conformist

Stefan Weinberger

MOVIE REVIEW
The Line (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

It’s not that boys will be boys, or men will be men. It’s power corrupting power. It’s an ugly mentality but one that we, as a society, seem completely disinterested in changing, even as movies about disgusting frat-house culture can be made anew every couple of years. “The Line” is a solid, but not smart, addition to the genre. On the plus side, it knows to its bones the games men play with each other that aren’t really games. On the minus, it has no idea at all about how power includes women. This lazy omission means “The Line” comes up short.

Bury My Heart at Fenway Park

Jeff Powers

MOVIE REVIEW
Reverse the Curse (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

Based on his work as a writer, David Duchovny loves three things: New York City, erudite puns and baseball. He has written novels which tackle each of these subjects individually, but began his public writing career with an episode of "The X-Files" (the '90s TV show/zeitgeist in which he also starred) centered around baseball’s segregated Negro leagues. In the episode, set in the 1940s, a baseball-loving alien (Jesse L. Martin) decided to stay on earth as a black man so he could still play baseball without attracting major league attention. When the episode premiered it was a big surprise, both for its quality and the idea that an intellectual type such as Mr. Duchovny would have chosen a sports theme. But more importantly, the existence of the Negro leagues had been allowed to slide from pop-culture memory, and Mr. Duchovny’s willingness to confront his beloved sport's shameful past was noted and appreciated. "Reverse the Curse" doesn't operate on nearly as big a scale: It's about how sports is a bonding tool between men who otherwise prefer silence and makes no serious political points. In this case, the love of the game is supposed to be enough. And once again, somewhat to everyone’s surprise, it is.

Falling Into Place

Carlos Vargas

MOVIE REVIEW
Melody of Love (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

What this strange, quiet misfire has to offer is its unusual location – Addis Ababa. The concept of middle-class people living ordinary lives in an urban African setting is still somewhat unusual in Western cinema, but the good news is things are changing. “Melody of Love’s” writer-director Edmundo Bejarano is Bolivian, with no obvious connection to Ethiopia, and pleasantly uninterested in poverty porn or cruel stereotyping. The terrible trouble is he forgot to give his movie a plot, and left both his protagonist and his audience twisting in the wind.

The Music Lovers

Oléo Films

MOVIE REVIEW
Maestra (2023)

By TIM HAYES

The first thing that happens in "Maestra," a documentary by Maggie Contreras following an international group of female orchestral conductors, is the sound of someone screaming in rage or agony or anguish over a black screen. A viewer primed by the film "Tár" for the psychodramas of the profession will suspect the person shrieking might be about to stab someone with a baton; but when the lights come up it turns out to be Mélisse Brunet, a modest and experienced French-born conductor guiding a young student through a spot of primal scream therapy. Ms. Brunet advises her pupil to "Wear what you want and do what you want" at the podium, the film's first approach to the expectations that can restrict female conductors, and the likelihood that they will be told to do neither of those things. The individuals followed by "Maestra" are diverse, talented and committed; but by the end you appreciate why Ms. Brunet's screams might be coming from the heart.

Out of Her Element

Disney/Pixar

MOVIE REVIEW
Elemental (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

Possibly the greatest piece of recent cultural criticism was the tweet which said all Pixar movies are about whether something has feelings. Cars, toys, fish, robots, planes, rats, feelings themselves. In “Elemental,” the newest Pixar/Disney movie and the closing film of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, this concept is taken one further. What if the basic elements of life (air, fire, water and earth) had feelings, and furthermore what if some of those feelings were racist? This is quite an extrapolation for a kids' movie, especially one that overlooks the fact that kids having parents of different races is not remotely unusual anymore. Some really stunning visuals, a refreshing attitude to gender roles, and the first explicitly gay women in a Disney movie go some way to make up for this throwback of a concept, but it's unfortunately not enough to make the movie any good.

From Jersey With Love

Brad Garrison

MOVIE REVIEW
Chasing Chasing Amy (2023)

By TIM HAYES

Art does unpredictable work at a distance, one reason among several to leave it where it is no matter what you might personally think or what its makers get up to. In the case of Sav Rodgers, suffering through an unhappy late-2000s high school education in Kansas and the casual homophobia of fellow students, Kevin Smith's then-decade-old 1997 film, "Chasing Amy," became comfort food, lifeline and object of fascination. "Chasing Chasing Amy" is the very personal story of how Mr. Smith's film - the one in which New Jersey comic-book writer Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) is smitten with Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams) and loses his bearings when he hears that she is a lesbian - worked the spell that art can work, closing the gap between a viewer and everything outside despite the movie's own flaws or nature. Having waited for its moment to spring into someone's life disguised as a VHS tape, Mr. Smith's work proceeded to change that life, the right tool in the right place.