When sex happens once a year

  Boasting a blatantly contrived high-concept premise, One Night Only is better than it ought to be. At the same time, the movie — which rides on  agreeable performances from Monica Barbaro and Collum Tower — isn’t the winning charmer it might have been.

  The contrivance: One Night Only, directed by Will Gluck and written by Travis Baum, creates a world in which unmarried people are subject to an oppressive government mandate: They’re allowed to have sex on only one night a year. 

  Don't expect a hard satirical punch; the movie delivers more of a powder-puff pat. The sex mandate stems from a fascistic government that wants to promote marriage and restrain what it regards as profligacy. 

   Gluck surrounds this implausible premise with a spiffed-up version of New York City, where Tower’s Owen operates a pizza restaurant and Barbaro’s Allie sings for a living. 

    Afflicted by stage fright, Allie is relegated to recording songs for commercials, in this case for a drug that’s supposed to help with psoriasis. Is there a compelling reason that psoriasis maintains its cliched status as joke material? 

   After an initial flop of a meet-cute, Allie and Owen try to find someone with whom to have sex while the clock ticks its way towards celibacy. 

    A romantic at heart, Allie gives up on any hope of finding love after an ill-fated foray to a bar with a pal.  She heads home, but her gay roommate (Quintessa Swindell) gives her a sexy dress and pushes her out again.

    For his part, Owen is stranded by his girlfriend (Maya Hawke). Over an expensive omakase dinner, she announces that she doesn’t plan to sleep with him. She's after a new experience. 

   Allie and Owen keep encountering each other as the movie works its way through a variety of contrivances, notably a search for condoms in a market where they seem to have sold out.

   Eventually we meet Owen’s mom (Molly Ringwald). She has planned a sexual evening with her partner (LeVar Burton). Still, the movie mostly wanders through a Gen Z world, introducing a set piece involving a hip private party. Allie easily gains admission. Owen is shut out.

    At the party, Allie meets a rock star (Charlie Gillespie) who pushes her to sing in public. He charms her until their encounter goes bad with a bit that lands an unneeded sour note.

    A determined socialite (a sharp Ella Loudon) gets Owen into the club, but that relationship also goes awry in another scene that hovers on the border of tastelessness.

     Look, we know that Owen and Allie are destined to be together. Some of the dialogue is amusing, as is a precocious kid (Mateo Ray) who boldly presents himself as a possible sex partner for Allie.

     So back to the beginning. Gluck (Easy A and Anyone But You) gets good work from his cast, but can't liberate enough laughs from this gimmicky fable. 

     

       

       

'Ice Cream Man' offers gore galore

Eli Roth has directed notable horror movies, among them  Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005). He's also produced such helpings of horror as Clown (2014) and Haunt (2019). Now, Roth arrives with Ice Cream Man, a horror movie that tries to cut the heart out of idyllic, small-town life when a smiling ice cream man (Ari Millen) turns the town's kids into killers. Ice Cream Man tries to walk the line between sadistically funny and sickeningly gory. Roth knows how to do that, but once you see a sweet little girl saw off her mother's head with a hacksaw, you've pretty much got the bloody drift. I'm not going to describe all of  Roth's bloody inventions, but if Roth was looking for a satirical edge, he misses. Roth can't squeeze much thematic juice out this gory kiddie revolt against adult authority. The plot centers on Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), youngster who remains immune to the killing urge because he's lactose intolerant and didn't eat the tainted ice cream. Before the movie ends, Roth serves up a silly, tortured explanation for all the kiddie carnage. For the record, Roth plays Jared's father in a serving of horror that melts away while we await the next serving of gore, such delicacies as brains scooped from the head of a school principal. Gross? Yes. Up to the best standards of horror wit? Hardly.

The callow youth of Anthony Bourdain

  In the summer of 1975, a callow 19-year-old from New Jersey traveled to Provincetown, Mass., a certified mecca of free-style living. Tony (later to become celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain) spent the summer working in restaurants and partying. 

 At the time, Bourdain was dealing with rejection for a writing fellowship at Vassar, the college he attended. But that didn't stop him from claiming to be a writer to anyone who’d listen. 

 Bourdain assayed this early part of his life in Kitchen Confidential (2000), a bestseller that helped boost his public profile and establish his reputation as a bad boy of culinary arts. 

  In the movie, Tony, a renegade young Bourdain  (Dominic Sessa) follows a girl (Emilia Jones) he has fallen for to Provincetown. Once there, he lands a restaurant job and sleeps on a hammock on the porch of the Portuguese restaurateur (Antonio Banderas) who will become his mentor.

  So goes the movie-altered version of this fledgling period of Bourdain's life. Johnson turns Tony into a coming-of-age story in which a young man learns to accept the use of the more formal  “Anthony,” a decision that's emblematic of his emerging seriousness about food.

   The movie opens with a telling quote from Kitchen Confidential in which the mature Anthony looks back at his young self: “I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” 

    We don't spend much time wondering whether this knockabout kid will ruin his life. We know Tony's arrogance will make way for the man who became a worthy guide through the world of food — no matter how exotic the fare. Bourdain's travelogue and food expeditions also yielded one of the best-written shows on television.

     In that sense, Johnson’s movie can't help being a bit of a cheat. We know the immature jerk of Tony will mature. We also know that Tony's pretensions about being a writer eventually became real; as a writer, he matched a broad range of interests with keen powers of observation. He didn't have to pretend to be smart; he was smart.

     Filled with drinking, drugs, and carousing, Tony's youthful summer is set against the noisy mayhem of a kitchen backdrop. Tony makes novice mistakes but eventually gains some footing. He discovers that he could feel at home in a kitchen, a feeling I'd liken to what some of us felt about the newsrooms where we learned to be reporters, places where we thought we could belong.

     A small cast of kitchen characters includes Sal (Leo Woodall), a womanizing, cocaine-snorting oyster shucker and prep cook who wears his callousness with a confidence Tony can't match. 

    Johnson’s story includes an incident in which the restaurant suffers a major calamity. Other scenes depict Tony's wobbly relationship with Jones’ Nancy. She's the woman who eventually would become Bourdain's first wife. 

    Credit Banderas with a weary and wise performance as a chef who's so religious he makes Tony accompany him to church on Sunday. Banderas's character presides over a band of young rogues but he respects the disciplined ways of the kitchen. He may not be a the top of his game, but he knows where the peaks are.

    Tony stands as a decent preview of a life that was destined to become more interesting after the movie’s redemptive conclusion. The adult Bourdain was better company than his 19-year-old self -- and more interesting, as well.

     Bourdain committed suicide in June of 2018. He was 61. Johnson minimizes suggestions about the tragic end awaiting the cocky kid who Sessa brings to life. He sticks to the world Bourdain inhabited before his life began to take shape.

      Some of the dramatic license Johnson takes bothered me, but I went along for the ride. I appreciated the movie’s willingness to spice up the coming-of-age formula. I also realized that in this post-Bear era, I could still appreciate a foray into the bustling world of a professional kitchen, even in a tourist trap of a restaurant that was a long way from Brasserie Les Halles, the now gone New York eatery where Bourdain became executive chef.

     Nineteen-year-old Tony probably would have had to borrow a few bucks to purchase even a moderately priced appetizer at Brasserie Les Halles. Tony's mix of comedy and colorful incidents will do until someone makes a movie about the grown-up who fascinated us with his adventurous spirit and knowledge. That might make for a more memorable movie.

      

      

A samurai tires of the sword

  When a movie entitled The Samurai and the Prisoner arrives, it's fair to expect ample swordplay. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa defies that expectation in a big way.

 Adapting a 2021 novel by Honobu Yonezawa, Kurosawa's 16th-century period piece offers more talk than action, much of it concerning intrigue inside a castle that's about to be overrun by a powerful warlord.

  Although the movie contains one battle sequence and a couple of additional violent scenes, The Samurai and the Prisoner mostly involves conversations in which the lord of the castle questions retainers or ruminates about the coming siege. 

   Kurosawa relies heavily on these conversations to accomplish what other directors might have shown in flashbacks or as part of a flowing narrative. The approach takes a bit of adjustment, but it soon becomes clear that Kurosawa’s four-part story centers on betrayals, tests of loyalty, and the difficulties of breaking with long-established customs.

    Masahiro Motoki plays Araki Murashige, lord of Arioka Castle. Tired of fighting and wary of samurai demands for revenge, Murashige disappoints his followers by sparing the lives of those who cross him.

    A pivotal event occurred before the movie's start when Murashige broke with the invading Oda Nobunaga, a leader of acknowledged brutality. Murashige spends most of the movie trying to outsmart his opponent or trying to avoid the worst consequences of a devastating invasion.

   Masaki Suda plays Kuroda Kanbei, the prisoner of the title, a brilliant strategist who works for Nobunaga. Murashige imprisons him, even relying on the brilliant him for advice, much of it delivered in the form of cryptic riddles.

    Murashige’s wife (Yuriko Yoshitaka) may have her own agenda. Having already tasted Nobunaga's cruelty, she’s obsessed with ideas about the afterlife and allows Kurosawa to explore another theme while establishing Murashige as a skeptic about beliefs he dismisses as superstitious.

    As for Murashige, he interrogates his retainers about matters that include murder and betrayal. At times, the movie plays like a series of high-stakes mini whodunnits that include the murder of an eight-year-old captive Murashige wanted spared.

   Another episode centers on a severed head that has been taken by Murashige's forces, a battle trophy that also confirms the death of an enemy general.

   Divided into chapters marked by each of the four seasons, the story proves talky and sometimes confusing. The characters are based on real historical figures who may be well known to Japanese audiences. American audiences aren’t likely to have that advantage.

    Known mostly for horror films (Cure, Pulse, and Retribution), Kurosawa (no relation to the great Akira Kurosawa) plays this one straight, although he's not averse to adding melodramatic flourishes, particularly at the film's conclusion. 

   The Samurai and the Prisoner boasts fine performances, an unwavering commitment to dialogue, and what appears to be careful period detailing. But as the movie wore on, I wondered whether Yonezawa's book -- described as a blend of historical and detective fiction -- might have worked better on the page. 

   Kurosawa’s approach tells as much as it shows, and the result can be wearing in ways that keep the characters at a distance, turning a 147-minute movie into a succession of sometimes revealing puzzles that generate limited emotional involvement.

'Spider-Man' can still spin some fun

  As far as Spider-Man is concerned, the world has amnesia. Still heralded as a crime fighter, Spider-Man has become a loner. Even his closest friends have forgotten that he’s also Peter Parker, a nice guy from Queens. 

 To clarify: The collective loss of memory that underlies Spider-Man: Brand New Day stems from developments at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), the previous installment of the four-film series starring Tom Holland as Spider-Man.

 Directed by Dustin Daniel Cretton, this edition explores Spidey's deep loneliness, the soul-wrenching isolation that derives from being alienated from the humanizing comforts of his former life. 

   Don't fret: This alienation isn’t buried deep inside  psychological subtext: It’s right on the surface as are the usual Marvel tropes about problems that accrue to those deemed "special."

   So let’s spin ahead: Brand New Day offers well-mounted action, nicely executed vertiginous airborne set pieces, and a scene-stealing role for Jon Bernthal, who plays Frank Castle, The Punisher. As a character of ambiguous intent, Bernthal brings an amusingly credible dose of urban grit to the proceedings. 

    Mark Ruffalo also has a nice turn as Bruce Banner, the professor who becomes The Hulk. Like a child who recognizes that a tantrum has gotten out of hand, Banner agonizes over his destructive powers.

    Better yet, the movie remains grounded on Earth, one of the things that makes Spider-Man appealing. Sans his uniform, Spider-Man's body shows the bruises he receives from slamming into buildings. He also must fiddle with ways to control is arachnid genes.

    Familiarity with The Avengers and X-Men movies helps because you'll find some of the inevitable cross-pollination that has become a defining Marvel feature. Think branding within branding, which can create confusion for those who arrive unequipped with glossaries.

    The emotion in Brand New Day derives from Spider-Man's relationship with girlfriend MJ (Zendaya). Best pal Ned (Jacob Batalon) is obsessed with Spider-Man’s crime-fighting, but has no idea who the person under the mask might be. Both characters knew Spider-Man's secret identity before the onset of global amnesia.

     Holland does a fine job as a young man grappling with identity and loss, not only of his pals, but of wise  Aunt May (Marissa Tomei), whose grave he visits and who appears in a flashback.

     An early picture battle with Scorpion (Michael Mando) has some sting, but the main story revolves around a revelation (no fair saying more) fans should appreciate. 

      The story introduces a bureaucratic agency dubbed Damage Control. As Damage Control director William Metzger (Tramel Tillman) says he wants to harness the energy of a villain who knows how to leap from mind to mind and take over the bodies of … well …. anyone. 

      Depicted as waves of telepathic energy that ripple through the air, body-hopping can happen between any two beings who are no more than 33 feet apart.

     Marvel newcomer Sadie Sink, never mind how she turns up, proves a welcome addition. Watch for a cameo appearance by Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, a character with an unusual office.

     I can't say that I loved Brand New Day. Some of the storytelling feels muddled, a few talky scenes add emotion but slow the pace, and, true to Marvel's MO, Brand New Day dutifully does groundwork for possible future movies.

     Still, I enjoyed enough of Brand New Day to stay with it. Marvel's big-screen menu (sequels, prequels, and stand-alone adventures) seems as if it will run on forever, but credit Brand New Day for qualifying as a worthy special of the day.

                                     

Can a robot assuage a family’s grief?

   

 The loss of a child is serious business, but director Hirokazu Kore-eda treats the subject gently in Sheep in the Box, a fable bolstered by a touch of sci-fi. Kore-eda's screenplay involves a humanoid, a robot child that enters the movie to ease the pain of two grieving parents (Daigo Yamamoto and Haruka Ayase). 
   A company called Rebirth contacts the grieving couple. The company creates an exact replica of their late son Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), a humanoid that's been programmed to look, sound, and act like the seven-year-old child they lost.

 Kore-eda who won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018 for Shoplifters, adds idiosyncratic touches to a fable that sits on the edge of formula, never quite submitting to it but not finding a strikingly fresh alternative either.

    Not surprisingly, these parents -- one a carpenter, the other an architect -- run into problems when this robot boy arrives in their lives; the presence of the replacement child forces them to consider the grief they've been unable to face. Each assumes blame for the boy's death. They both had excuses for not picking Kakeru up from school on the day he died.

    Made with a gentle spirit, Sheep in the Box passes easily -- perhaps too easily.  Initially, Mom fully embraces the little robot. Dad remains skeptical. And each parent goes through periods of frustration with a son who doesn't eat and whose electrical system makes it dangerous for him to immerse in water.

      Some familiar questions arise: Is it possible that Kakeru has a soul? Is it unethical for adults to have control of Kakeru's body, which has been equipped with a GPS that prevents him from straying too far from his anxiety-prone parents.

      At one point, Kakeru meets other humanoids; they form a group that's intent on moving away from their human "parents," some of whom are abusive. 

      The movie sharpens when Grandma (Kimiko Yo) turns up, making no bones about her opposition to using an android as a palliative for grief. 

       Questions about humanity's future are raised but go nowhere. We're left with small humane moments, as Dad struggles with contradictions about his feelings. Mom, busy with one her projects, eventually faces some of the resentments motherhood can engender.

      Sheep in the Box -- the title derives from The Little Prince, a story Kakeru loves --offers sentiment, sci-fi elements, and tender touches, but the movie slips by without engaging on the deeper levels. A provocative subject fails to provoke.

‘The Dink’ is bland — but cheerful

The Dink, a movie about a former tennis wiz reduced to playing pickleball, is a cheerfully bland comedy about a game that has swept the country. Jake Johnson plays Dustin Boyd, a loser who works as a junior tennis instructor at a country club run by his father (Ed Harris). A tough old bird, Dad regards his son as a failure. An ill-fated match with Andy Roddick ended teenage Dustin's promising career. He’s been floundering ever since. The plot hinges on a request by country club members -- led by Patton Oswalt -- to expand the club’s number of pickleball courts. Harris's old-school character resists because he sees pickleball as a threat to all he respects. It's too easy, he thinks. A reluctant Dustin soon tries his hand at pickleball, teaming with Candace (Mary Steenburgen), a recent divorcee. The two get off to a bumpy start, but become participants in a story that flirts with May/December romance. Aaron Chen portrays PJ, the sidekick who thinks Dustin can do no wrong. Ben Stiller, one of the movie's producers, signs on as a doctor who treats Dustin for a minor injury and adds unfunny off-color flourishes.  Sean Clements’ screenplay sets up a match that puts the club's future at stake. Will the pickleballers triumph? Cameos from Roddick and John McEnroe add spice, but the overall effort proves forgettable. The Dink is playing on Apple TV.

She orders him to have sex

Erika Tracy is a Los Angeles art star. Just ask her. As played by Olivia Wilde, Erika becomes the driving force in I Want Your Sex, director Gregg Araki's satirical look at a conceptual artist who hires a floundering 23-year-old college graduate (Cooper Hoffman) as a studio assistant. Delighted to land a job, Hoffman's Elliott gets more than he bargained for when Erika bluntly proposes that they have sex. Thus begins Elliott's wild foray into sexual waters he doesn't know how to navigate, something co-worker Zap (Mason Gooding) senses from the outset. Enthralled with his new sexual playground, Elliott eventually bids farewell to his aggressively indifferent girlfriend (Charli xcx). Daveed Diggs plays Vikktor, Erika's haughty, judgmental manager who tells Elliott that he's not the first young man to travel this road. Erika knows that she's all style and no substance, but she's skilled at playing the art game. Wilde has a field day playing an artist who dresses to shock and boasts about her lascivious ways. Erika's sexual encounters with Elliott are preceded by instructions that come across as orders, even when Elliott's roommate (Chase Sui Wonders) joins them  for an ill-fated threesome. Hoffman, the son of the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, makes a perfect patsy as the screenplay by Araki and Karley Sciortino torches its way through an enjoyably outrageous comedy that Wilde, like her character, boldly commands. Great summer for Wilde, by the way. She also appears in The Invite, a movie she directed.

An academic faces oppression in Iran

    

   Collaborating on a screenplay with Marjorie David, Israeli director Eran Riklis tells a story of academic oppression in Iran, basing his movie on a best-selling memoir by Azar Nafisi.

     In 1979, Nafisi (Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband (Arash Marandi) returned to Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini had just come to power, and Nafisi  -- along with many other returnees -- leaned toward the notion that a newly liberated Iran offered opportunities for renewal. Nafisi wanted to teach Iranian university students and live in the country she loved, which she left as a teenager to continue her studies. 

      Hopeful about contributing, Nafisi met with disappointment. What followed her return was anything but a loosening of the tight jaws of oppression. Nafisi faced pushback about refusing to wear a head scarf and her attempts to teach openly and critically met with failure.

      After being forced to leave her university job, Nafisi began teaching classes privately to a small group of women who wanted to continue their studies. Eventually, the group got around to Nabokov's Lolita, a book which the hard-core religious rulers of Iran might deem as a perverse endorsement of pedophilia.

       The women share their views on books — Henry James' Daisy Miller, for example — but the story also deals with the problems Nafisi's students face as the regime continues to pervade daily life.  One student (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) is arrested and subjected to a forced virginity test after an arrest. She was also given  a 25-lash sentence. 

      The movie serves as a guide to the difficulties faced by educated women in Tehran, and a reminder of how oppressive regimes make their presence felt in education.

       Farahani captures Nafisi’s the increasing frustration that curdles the optimism and enthusiasm with which she had approached her return to Iran. 

       The main theme about the way oppression stifles artistic expression are clear, but the movie proceeds in programmatic fashion that seldom catches fire, and we’re left with a useful adaptation of a memoir that chronicles broken dreams and crushed hopes.