Soviet kitsch

The Death of Stalin

Crit

A strange and mostly exhilarating mix of plausible history and slapstick that follows (and imagines) the infighting and backstabbing en route to the rise of Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi, fronting a brilliant ensemble cast) to the leadership of the Soviet Union.

Unsane

Crit

It may seem implausible that a film whose main claim to originality is really bad cinematography generated by an iPhone and whose lead character (played by Claire Foy, who could be Emily Blunt's little sister) is patently unappealing could earn a guardedly positive review from me, but here it is: I found it worth watching, despite the is-she-crazy beginning, the even-paranoids-are-sometimes-right middle, and the will-she-escape climax.

It's permanent

Oh Lucy!

Crit

Don't let the exclamation point in the title, the blond wig on the Japanese pseudo-title character in the poster, or the presence of Josh Hartnett in the cast fool you: this is one dark film. Also a very good one, about infatuation, alienation, depression, and betrayal. And let me tell you: if Shinobu Terajima (Setsuko, dubbed Lucy by Hartnett's English-teaching John) didn't actually get a tattoo during the shoot, the film's makeup staff did a brilliant job of simulating the angry look of a brand-new tat.

Chemical reaction

Red Sparrow

Crit

OK, this is one that Manohla Dargis liked but the majority of critics panned, so I had to see the reverse of the scenario for the other two recents.

And she's right again: this is good, goofy, trashy, borderline prurient stuff, with a spectacularly good cast, many of them using spectacularly bad Russian accents. (Good rant by Anthony Lane in the New Yorker about the weirdness of having foreigners speak English but with accents that label the English we're hearing as meant to be understood as the speaker's native language.)

It's no Ninotchka, or even Silk Stockings, but then what is?

The key to my peace of mind

Sanpo suru shinryakusha (Before we vanish)

Crit

An extremely low-budget, low-production values reboot of the body snatcher trope, with pretensions of a tunneling down into the essence of humanity. This is like something really smart and talented high schoolers might make.

An usher asked whether it's worth watching--then, when I hesitated, added, "in the theater?" That made it easy: there's nothing big-screen about it, and it's probably better off being watched on a home screen.

Una mujer fantástica (A fantastic woman)

Crit

Daniela Vega is riveting as the transsexual widow in all but name of a man whose family wants to obliterate all trace of her from its history, while all she seeks is the right to mourn as part of a community rather than as an outcast. A beautiful, moving film.

Muddy track

Thoroughbreds

Crit

Two films in less than a week w/ great Rotten Tomatoes numbers but a dissent from Manohla Dargis, and in both cases (though less so here that with The Party), I'm with Ms. D.

Like the other, this is wicked, and wickedly well acted, but it falls short in direction and writing (though here at least it's not pretentiously "smart" writing; it's just storytelling that makes little sense).

I was hoping for Heavenly Creatures redux, but while the young actors (in this case, the already familiar Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke, plus the tragically terminated Anton Yelchin) make their marks, I don't think we'll be looking back at writer-director Cory Finley years from now as we did the earlier film's writers and director.

Winter's bones

Нелюбовь (Loveless)

Quad

Boris and Zhenya are not the world's worst parents, but they're in the middle of a divorce, and they're trying to sell their apartment, and each is involved with a new lover (Boris's girlfriend is very pregnant), and then there are their jobs, and, well, they just don't have much attention or warmth to spare to Alexey, who was an accident that befell two teenagers to begin with, and whom they sort of blame for forcing them into a terrible marriage.

So not the world's worst parents, but self-involved enough to be in, say, the 70th percentile. Moreover, Alexey is the focus of an unusual custody battle: each parent wants the other to take him.

So the miserable boy runs away. And then things really get miserable. A brutally excellent film from Andrey Zvyagintsev, writer and director of the brutally excellent Leviathan.

Everything was fine until the pastry shells burned

The Party

Ang

Live by the Rotten Tomatoes score, die by the Rotten Tomatoes score. A criminally good cast tries to make the best out of a stagy production and dialogue that toggles between banal and precious. Only Bruno Ganz succeeds, largely because his character toggles between banal and precious. A dreadful waste, with a wasted twist.

Extremely Old Trafford

Early Man

AMC Kips Bay

Holy pigs, I didn't realize this was going to be all about football (you know, . . .)! The first of 3 mornings of pre-Big Ten tournament basketball was just the sort of goofy delight we've come to expect from the Aardman animation studio.

As with Annihilation, it starts with a meteorite, one that the Stone Ages quickly discover is too hat to be handled, but can be kicked to entertaining effect. No surprises, but enough wit and bad puns to make us not care.