Critic's Notebook

Haitian Child Support

Javier Labrador

MOVIE REVIEW
Mountains (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

The marketing describes “Mountains” as about the generational gap between immigrants and their children, but it’s considerably more nuanced than that. The gap is between parents who work with their hands – Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) works in demolition, part of a small crew tearing down unwanted properties in Miami’s Little Haiti, while his wife, Esperance (Sheila Anozier), is a crossing guard and dressmaker – and adult children whose job prospects are much more ethereal. Junior (Chris Renois) parks cars at a hotel and is attempting to build a stand-up comedy career by night, relying on a set that discusses how he is a disappointment to his parents. The physical realm is what previous generations are used to, while the younger people must search for their place in the cloud, the nebulous atmosphere where relationships are all. The mountains of the title are metaphorical, but this very good film knows how they rise up between where you are and where you want to be.

Spirited Astray

Beijing October Media

MOVIE REVIEW
Deep Sea (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

You thought an animated movie set in a restaurant-submarine owned by a magical clown-chef, staffed by walruses and otters and patronized by fish-people customers who are glued to their phones, with an 11-year-old human girl as the main character, was a kids’ movie? You rube. You fool. You absolute nincompoop. This movie is so grim – it has no problem with child abuse and mental cruelty, in addition to holding young Shenxiu (voiced by Wang Tingwen) responsible for the behavior of the adults around her – that only an idiot would show it to anyone under 12, though depressed teenagers will probably love it. This is also probably because the animation is unusually beautiful, in a smeary, lacquered way, populating every centimeter of every frame with the world-building detail found in the best kids’ movies. Sometimes the little otters, who generally work as waiters and bussers in the restaurant, even dress up in animal onesies and sing songs. But all of this anthropomorphic detail and visual depth wallpapers a plot of jaw-dropping horror that builds to a ghastly ending. The combined beauty and trauma is undoubtedly what brought it to the Tribeca Festival, but as such it’s very hard to recommend. Director Tian Xiaopeng has made a gorgeous atrocity.

Anchorman

Tribeca Festival

MOVIE REVIEW
Rather (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

It must be nice to be able to participate in your eulogy, even if not every aspect of your life is one you care to remember. Dan Rather got his start on local news in Texas, meaning he was the man on the spot when John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963; and 60 years later here we are watching a documentary about his journalism career at the Tribeca Festival. Mr. Rather is in his 90s, still participating in the news cycle through his Substack and a sassy Twitter feed, and witnessing a world of news and journalism which he directly shaped through his choices and his mistakes. The movie is more of a primer for those too young to remember journalism before the 24-hour news cycle, but its examination of Mr. Rather’s legacy pulls no punches.

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.