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.

      

Tracking Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey'

   You've already seen The Odyssey. You've probably seen it many times.  I'm not talking about filmed versions, one in 1954 and another in 1997. I'm talking about movies that -- knowingly or not -- have retold the Odyssey story, if not literally, then by mimicking its structure. 

    You know the drill. A valiant hero is separated from all that's familiar to him. He must overcome many obstacles to achieve a goal that resonates in movies as diverse as The Wizard of Oz and E.T. The hero wants to go home, home representing everything good, stable, and familiar. 

    Put another way, The Odyssey may date to the late 8th century BC, but it created one of the templates for storytellers that endures to this day. 

    Unless you've been living in isolation, you know that director Christopher Nolan has made his version of The Odyssey, opting to avoid literary flourishes that might have struck contemporary ears as unrecognizably florid. At one point, Telemachus, son of Odysseus, calls his mother "mom." I did a double take when I heard Odysseus referred to as "daddy."

    A bit strange, yes, but the heart of the movie involves an episodic account of the perils Odysseus faces on his return trip to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

    As you can guess, there isn't much smooth sailing in The Odyssey. Seas roil and blood is shed. Odysseus' adventures may remind younger viewers of horrors they've encountered in Marvel movies. In Nolan's hands, they serve as tests of Odysseus' character and cunning, with cunning sometimes trumping issues of character.  

     Looking grizzled and battle-worn, Matt Damon, as Odysseus, highlights Odysseus' internal conflicts. How many men must be sacrificed to save most of the loyal soldiers who accompany Odysseus on his journey home? Put another way, Odysseus  — the ultimate pragmatist — constantly wrestles with his conscience. 

    Odysseus’ journey pauses when he washes up on the shores of a secret island inhabited by Calypso (Charlize Theron), an immortal beauty who offers Odysseus a chance to live with her forever. 

     No, says Odysseus; he’d rather be mortal and return to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway). Embittered and lonely, Penelope has spent the last 20 years warding off freeloading suitors who have invaded Odysseus' home, notably the sly Antinous (a terrific Robert Pattinson).

    Nolan also adds many of the side characters that bring color to the epic story. Eumaeus (John Leguizamo), a blind swineherd, remains loyal to Odysseus throughout his long absence, demonstrating that virtue isn't necessarily confined to those of noble birth.

      All of this plays against a counter story. Telemachus (Tom Holland) leaves home to find the father he doesn't know, although his trip isn't quite as fraught as his father's.

     Nolan presents a narratively complex story in segments, some of which merge easily and others which can make the movie seem a bit discombobulated, particularly at the outset.

   Sometimes, Nolan hurls us into some of the movie's  episodes without build-up, but he brings the story's bits and pieces together in the movie's finale, arguably the best and most commanding part of this gargantuan effort.

    In one of the movie's more engaging episodes, Odysseus encounters Circe (a compelling Samantha Morton), a witch who can turn men into animals, thus exposing what she regards as their essential natures.

     Then there's Menelaus (a strong Jon Bernthal) and his wife Helen (Lupita Nyong'o), both of whom Telemachus visits in hopes of learning his father’s whereabouts. Zendaya turns up as Athena, the goddess who appears to Odysseus, sometimes as a reminder of the pain he has inflicted on others.

       As he customarily does, Nolan minimizes the use of special effects. I’ve read that the fearsome Cyclops was created with a mixture of puppetry, animatronics, and a performance by Bill Irwin. An enormous Trojan horse was built to lay the groundwork for one of the movie's most powerful scenes. A chastened Odysseus witnesses the carnage wrought when he deceived the Trojans, entered Troy, and conquered the city. 

    With victory comes horror and remorse, a twist that might be dubbed "the agony of victory." 

      The Odyssey is worth seeing, but I wasn't swept away by a film that seems targeted for greatness, an A-list production in front of and behind the camera.

     Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema keeps early scenes dark, simulating the look of candlelit interiors. He often presses his camera close to faces, presumably to bring intimacy to the proceedings.

       Production designer Ruth De Jong opts for naturalism rather than period-piece cliche, and Ludwig Goransson's score pumps adrenaline into clangorous depictions of battle, perhaps trying to replicate the thudding rhythms with which Homer’s poetry originally was delivered. 

        A masterwork with ample amounts of blood and gore, the story retains much of its power, even if some of its monsters seem more related to the era of Ray Harryhausen’s artifice (1963's Jason and the Argonauts) than contemporary visual pyrotechnics. 

     Nolan sustains a clear vision, coaxes out several memorable performances, and hits home when it counts, but I was expecting something more encompassing; I wanted a movie in which I could get lost, and got a movie that I tracked with interest.

   Ah, the cyclops. Ah, the whirlpool. Yes, there's Odysseus tied to a ship's past because he insists on hearing the irresistible siren song that could cause him to leap overboard and face certain death.

   The movie seemed best when it didn't feel like a checklist of Odyssey high points bolstered by a strong cast and a commitment to imagery. The Odyssey was filmed with 70mm IMAX cameras that beautifully capture the sandy expanse of beaches and the imposing emptiness of seas at sunset. The Odyssey may not be consistently compelling, but in the stillness of those moments, Nolan writes poetry of his own.

Scams inside a senior living facility

  

   

   Night Nurse takes place inside a high-end assisted living facility where some residents have a nurse with them at all times -- one serving during the day and another at night. Many of the residents suffer from dementia. 

    From the outset, director Georgia Bernstein makes it clear that she's not interested in exposing elder-care abuse. Heavy on atmospherics, Night Nurse embarks on a study of how care-giving relationships can be tainted by perversity and exploitation.

   Bernstein begins by introducing Eleni (Cemre Paksoy), a young nurse who's being interviewed for a job by the residential community's director (Mimi Rogers). Despite a shaky interview, Paksoy's Eleni lands the job as night nurse for Douglas Callum (Bruce McKenzie), a crank who's recognized as one of the facility's more difficult patients.

    Douglas's day nurse (Eleonore Hendricks) tries to clue the newbie into the ways of the place, which -- as we'll discover -- become increasingly weird.

    Douglas may not be as deep into Alzheimer's as it seems. It doesn't take long for Douglas, who makes sexual advances toward Elena, to enlist her help in a scheme. She's asked to call other residents and pretend to be a granddaughter who has been arrested after an auto accident. Douglas then gets on the phone, poses as the girl's lawyer, and asks that money be sent at once.

     The scam works, and Eleni starts to crave the illicit charge provided by the fraud. Her desires are pitted against those Douglas displays or withholds.

      Still, as played by Paksoy, Eleni is difficult to read. She's kinky in complex ways that aren't easily understood because there's something guarded and protected about her. 

      It's not easy to predict where this self-contained movie might be headed or what it wants to say. Described as a "psychosexual thriller," the movie comes up short on at least half of that description, notably the "thriller" part. 

     Bernstein hints at themes involving the nurses' desire to be needed and how a willingness to care for someone can be distorted into something destructive. Beyond that, there are questions about who possesses the most power as the relationship seesaw tips this way or that.

      Those are interesting ideas to explore, but they're also difficult to contain in a film that doesn't have much of a story to tell. Night Nurse feels as if it's unfolding in a limbo where the mystery of it all can feel listless, as if the characters are living in a trance state in which the film imprisons them.

Scattered laughs in 'Sex Pass'

    

    Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass brings a slapdash quality to a comedy that opts for a glut of gags that bob on a sea of silliness. Director David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) delivers a preposterous story, unremitting goofiness, and a disregard for credibility, driving his movie to zany extremes. 

     There's something refreshing about a movie without pretensions, but the problem with a scattershot approach to  comedy is that the laughs can be scattershot, as well. Wain and his writing partner, Ken Marino, open a mixed bag of jokes and spill them across an uneven 93 minutes.

     Zoey Deutch stars as a small-town Kansas hairdresser who's engaged to her high school sweetheart (Michael Cassidy). Enter the sex pass of the title.

     In a conversation neither seems to take seriously, Deutch’s Gail and Cassidy’s Tom give each other permission to sleep with the celebrity of their choice. No judgments will be made. No one will harbor grudges. Each of them will allow the other an infidelity one-off. 

     When Cassidy's Tom makes an improbable connection with Jennifer Aniston, who arrives in Kansas for a book signing, Gail decides the only way she can save her looming marriage is by having sex with her chosen celebrity, Jon Hamm. Balance matters.

      As luck (or contrivance) would have it, Gail has an opportunity to attend a convention in Los Angeles, but she has more in mind than keeping up with the latest styles. She wants to sleep with Hamm as part of the ridiculous game she has played with her fiancé.

     Most of the movie takes place in Los Angeles, where Gail and her hairdressing colleague (Miles Gutierrez Riley) hook up with a lowly employee at the CAA talent agency (Ben Wang), a down-on-his-luck photographer (Marino), and John Slattery, the actor who worked with Hamm on Mad Men but who -- at least in the movie -- has fallen on hard times.

       A plot of sorts emerges. Thanks to the swap of  lookalike suitcases at LAX, Gail winds up in possession of plans drawn up by a conspiracy to tank the global economy. Joe Lo Truglio and Mather Zickel are the dumber-than-dirt henchmen who work for the plan's mastermind (Sabrina Impecciatore), who wants her documents returned.

        No sense pointing out more. Know, though, that Deutch makes an excellent plucky innocent who smiles her way through a showbiz world that might intimidate others. Some of the dialogue is funny, and Wain even finds a way to take a poke at big-screen violence with a gun-heavy scene set on an abandoned Western movie set.

       Initially appalled by the group, Slattery eventually buys in, and Wang delivers a flurry of amusing high-speed dialogue as an aspiring agent.

       I haven't mentioned that Fred Melamed plays a mailman, who functions as the move's occasional narrator. Off-kilter celebrity cameos are sprinkled throughout. Aided by ample portions of slapstick, a game cast dishes out non-stop silliness that finds a way to introduce a hot-air balloon into its finale.

  And, by the way, if you try this one, forget taste. Wain and his team mount an assault on decorum along with everything else -- and there's a whole lot of everything else. 

Sex, talk, and relationships on view

   I already knew that Penelope Cruz can be a terrific comic actress, but The Invite, a movie about sex and relationships, reminded me how good she can be. I can’t say I’m a huge Seth Rogen fan, but he gives what might be his best performance in this Olivia Wilde-directed movie. Wilde also has a starring role.

   Essentially, The Invite is a four-hander with Edward Norton joining the group as a firefighter who has formed a relationship with a psychotherapist (Cruz), who describes herself as a sexologist. 

   Putting two couples (Wilde, Rogen, and Cruz and Norton) into a San Francisco apartment sounds claustrophobic, but working from a screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, Wilde makes her movie both provocative and entertaining. 

   The movie opens with Rogen’s Joe riding his folding bicycle home from his job as a music teacher at a minor San Francisco conservatory. Everything about Joe suggests defeat — from his slouch to his saturnine countenance. In hilly San Francisco, riding a bike can be punishing. Joe shows no signs of being able to escape his fate.

   When he arrives home with a bad back, Joe quickly gets into a tiff with his wife Angela (Wilde). She tells him the upstairs neighbors are coming to dinner. Joe claims that he’s been ambushed by the news. Angela’s upset that he didn’t buy wine for the occasion. We're primed for an evening of familiar bickering.

    But Joe has a specific complaint about the neighbors — Cruz’s Pina and Norton’s Hawk — make wild, noisy love that disrupts Joe’s sleep. Pina’s orgasms evidently have an epic quality. Joe insists he plans to complain. Angela slides into don’t-you-dare mode.

     It’s clear from the start that these two couples aren’t destined to be best friends forever. Norton’s Hawk has a self-possessed arrogance about him, and Pina has a pushy personality, an openness that borders on aggression. She presents herself as a free spirit.

    So where is all this going? The Invite soon turns into a movie about contemporary sexual mores and styles. Hawk and Pina, we learn, are into group sex. The noise Joe has been hearing comes from some of their orgy mates. Hawk upends Joe by bringing the subject up before Joe has a chance to complain. He feels he owes Joe an explanation.

     Wilde’s jittery uneasiness and Rogen’s inbred cynicism play well against two people who pride themselves on their maturity. I won’t describe the results, but the dialogue becomes sharply funny, and the actors are in peak form. 

     Wilde keeps things humming as we learn more about each character. Pina goes beyond her obvious eroticism. Hawk reveals a sobering part of his past, and Angela and Joe begin to see the truth that underlies their constant arguing: Their increasingly stale relationship may be teetering on the edge of extinction

     No fair telling more. The movie can’t quite decide how to end, but Wilde avoids a sentimental resolution and by the time the movie concludes, each character stands more revealed. Emotions, vulnerabilities, and personal truths have been bared. 

     Look, The Invite isn’t Chekov or Albee, but it’s engaging and deftly realized. That’s more than can be said about lots of current movies.

A foodie struggles with bulimia

In Maddie's Secret, director John Early plays the lead character, a woman dealing with a long-standing eating disorder, in this case, bulimia. A comedian, actor, and singer, Early's sex isn't the secret to which the movie's title refers. Early plays a female character. That’s it. The movie’s secret involves Maddie's bulimia, a condition she has been hiding for years. Maddie works in the food industry, beginning the movie as a dishwasher on a cooking show. A vegan who also knows how to cook, Maddie lands her own show and becomes a serious influencer. Up to that point, Maddie's husband Jake (Eric Rahill) had been the main beneficiary of Maddie's culinary talents. Her best friend Deena (Kate Bertlant) also plays a big role in Maddie's life. A lesbian who's crushing on Maddie, Deena is blindly supportive, maybe to the point of obsession. Early's screenplay piles on soap-operatic complications. When Jake discovers Maddie vomiting in the bathroom, he assumes she's pregnant. Claudia O'Doherty plays a co-worker who -- until Maddie's ascendance -- was the cooking network's star attraction. She’s not happy about slipping into second place. Early mostly succeeds in mixing humor and melodrama as he leads the story to Maddie's hospitalization after an eating disorder-induced heart attack. A late-picture scene involving Maddie's mother (Kristen Johnston) offers an explanation for Maddie's disorder that feels like an example of parental abuse played as much for melodramatic effect as for illuminating clarity. Still, Maddie's Secret isn't glib or dismissive, and Early plays Maddie with an undeniable sincerity that acknowledges the character's humanity as well as her disorder.

This 'Minions' is fun -- for a while

— A massive orange blob of a monster tries to devour much of Hollywood. 

— Images of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Dooley Wilson, who played Sam the piano player in Casablanca's Rick's Cafe, flicker by.

—  An animated George Lucas under glass asks to be released from his display at a museum.

—  Georges Milies's A Trip to the Moon crops up.

   All of that and more can be found in Minions & Monsters, the third stand-alone Minions movie since their solo debut in 2015. For the record, the Minions first appeared in 2010's Despicable Me.

  As you may be able to tell from the list above, Minions and Monsters is an eclectic -- sometimes frenzied -- addition to the series that places Henry and James -- two new Minion heroes -- in Hollywood during the silent era. 

   Director Pierre Coffin accelerates the action in ways that may remind older audiences of the smashing mayhem found in many Looney Tunes cartoons.

  As is their way, the Minions will race about looking for a new evil master to serve, but the story is framed by a guide named Olivia (voiced by Allison Janney) who's leading a Hollywood studio tour built around the idea that the minions invented Hollywood, a story that unfolds in flashbacks.

  In that story, Henry and James align themselves with Bright Brothers Studio, headed by two brothers voiced by Jeff Bridges. Bottom-line guys, the brothers prioritize  profits over aesthetics. The Minions are a hit.

  The arrival of sound finishes the Minions Hollywood triumph, but their trademark gibberish keeps them out of the Talkies.

   The story delivers additional commotion when Henry and James attempt to make a monster movie on their own, an effort that has them chanting magic spells to summon suitable monsters. 

  And, yes, that's Jesse Eisenberg's voice you hear as Dort, the alien robot who falls for a human woman.

  Young fans may not appreciate all the movie references because much of Minions & Monsters takes place during the 1920s. Older audiences may get a kick out of the movie's riotous first act, and those with a taste for colorful  clutter may be amused by the rest.

   Me? About three-quarters of the way through this one-hour-and-thirty-minute hunk of Minion maximalism,  the movie's early-picture cleverness began to fade, and I found myself looking forward to the end credits, which -- as it turns out -- include even more jokes.

'Couture' skims the fashion world

  

 Director Alice Winocour takes us to Paris for fashion week in Couture, a movie that tells three loosely related stories, one featuring Angelina Jolie.

 Perhaps you can already sense a problem. By having to switch the movie's focus from one character to another, Winocour loses the opportunity for in-depth looks at any of them, and Couture becomes more of a skim than a revelation.

  Jolie plays Maxine, an American director of an indie  horror film who's been invited to make a short opening film to kick off fashion week. 

   Eighteen-year-old Ada (Anyier Anei), an inexperienced, long-legged model, has been chosen to lead the parade of models that will open the show. Ada arrives in Paris from Kenya, where her family lives having fled wars in Sudan. 

    Finally, we meet Angele (Elle Rumpf), a make-up artist who's writing a book about her experiences in the fashion world. 

    Each of these characters faces different problems and opportunities. Maxine's participation in fashion week may provide her with a major career boost. 

   Ada must overcome shyness and fear as she enters a highly competitive and demanding business. 

   Angele wants to write successfully, to use her experience as a source of reflection.

   A health crisis adds to Maxine's anxieties. Early on, she receives a call from her doctor in the US. He insists that Maxine immediately see a French specialist. It turns out she has breast cancer. The news about her diagnosis worsens throughout the course of the movie.

    Following Ada provides an opportunity for Winocour to sketch the lives of young models, some of whom have already become cynical high-fashion veterans.

     Eventually, parts of Angele's book are heard in a voice over narration. Presumably meant to add arty flavor, they can sound a bit pretentious.

     Couture easily could have focused only on Jolie's character. Maxine’s issues become the movie’s most evocative and also do more to highlight complexities about women and their career paths, one of the movie's interests.

   Strong casting and a potentially rich setting aren't entirely wasted, but the resultant effort shortchanges the movie's major characters without finding enough meaningful ways to mingle their stories.

Wild and crazy? Maybe too much so

     

  Boots Riley directed an impressive and entertaining debut film with 2018's Sorry to Bother You, an eye-popping critique of telemarketing that hit a broad range of satirical targets. Riley boosted his distinctive aesthetic -- bold colors, sight gags, and preposterous turns of plot -- with giddy bursts of energy.

  Riley returns with I Love Boosters, a movie about women who steal clothing from a high-end store and sell it at a discount.

  Diving headlong into a sea of cartoonish chaos, I Love Boosters introduces two partners in crime -- Corvette (Keke Palmer) and Sade (Naomi Ackie). The duo has mastered the art of pilfering from retail outlets, stuffing purloined clothes under the clothes they're wearing. They waddle out of stores looking like parade floats.

   Don't mistake I Love Boosters for a caper movie. Riley has bigger aims. The movie's thieves target Christie Smith (Demi Moore), a big-name clothes designer who steals designs, one of them from aspiring designer Corvette.

   Thus begins a battle between working-class rogues and a corporate power broker who covers her thievery with elitism and arrogance.

  The rest of the cast includes Taylour Paige, Robin Thede, and LaKeith Stanfield. Stanfield turns up as a charming character with demonic abilities. Don't ask me why. Whatever the reason, he's part of what may be the year's most surreal sex scene. 

   Moving outward from the Bay Area, Riley adds an international twist. Poppy Liu appears as a rebellious worker at the Chinese factory where Smith's company makes its clothes, endangering workers' health by sandblasting jeans to make them look fashionably worn.

   That's a lot of movie, but as low-rent TV commercials used to say, "Wait. There's more."

    About three-quarters of the way through, Riley adds a teleportation device, which becomes a sci-fi goof and a source of silly sight gags.

   I Love Boosters gets off to a strong start, but three quarters of the way through, visual and plot overload begin to kick in, leaving us with sporadic giggles and lingering admiration for Riley's willingness to pull out every stop. 

   Riley's films have been taken as assaults on capitalist exploitation. If so, they're playful attacks from someone who, at his best, turns his films into  cornucopias of mischief. Some may even want to  categorize Riley's work as a form of cinematic performance art.

   In this second outing, though, Riley floods the screen with so many ideas and so much invention that not enough of it sticks. Perhaps it's a case of too much of a good thing.

Not enough kick in this 'Supergirl'

   

     Here we go again.

     DC Comics has added a new name to what feels like an infinite number of comic-book villains. It almost seems as if there are as many villains as there are drug commercials on TV. Some of these fiends even have names that sound like missed opportunities for drug companies.

     I’m sure, for example, that you can imagine being encouraged to ask your doctor about Krem, complete with quickly delivered warnings about side effects. 

     But back off, Big Pharma. Krem has been taken. The name belongs to the principal villain in the new Supergirl movie. Krem, by the way, leads the Brigands, male-dominated plunderers who capture young women for breeding purposes.

     Played by Mathias Schoenaerts, Krem's face is dotted with metal studs. He delivers his threats with underplayed menace. He's not from Earth, but he'd fit right in had he arrived in Metropolis in the heyday of late '70s punk.

       But what of Supergirl? Supergirl, a.k.a. Kara Zor-El, is Superman’s cousin. Played by Milly Alcock, Supergirl begins the movie as a hard-drinking party animal whose only companion is her rambunctious dog, Krypto.  

       Those who see the movie may be struck by the fact that most of Supergirl takes place far from Earth.  The action unfolds on planets that director Craig Gillespie and his team populate with creatures that look ready to audition for jobs as extras in Star Wars cantina scenes.

      A low-tech emphasis prevails. So, when Supergirl’s small spacecraft is stolen, she’s forced to wait at a forlorn bus stop until public transportation arrives.

       Working from a screenplay by Ana Nogueira, Gillespie abruptly drops in backstories, one involving  Kara’s escape from the planet Krypton, which pretty much mirrors what happened to Superman. 

      For most of the movie, Kara resembles a badly groomed teenager. Her disheveled mop of blonde locks leaves us wondering whether her father forgot to include a comb in the capsule that catapulted her to Earth just before the catastrophic end of Krypton.

      Early on, a reluctant Kara picks up a sidekick, young Ruthye (Eve Ridley), an embittered young woman whose parents were murdered by Krem. Ruthye doggedly tries to enlist Kara in her quest for vengeance.

       Then there’s Lobo (Jason Momoa), an intergalactic, cigar-chomping mercenarie who enters the picture as a biker who predictably will side with Kara, who -- by the way -- doesn’t don her Supergirl uniform until the movie's third act.

       Fights and action mark a movie in which production designer Neil Lamont creates a retro-comic-book environment that eschews futuristic sleekness. At times, Supergirl looks like a thrift-store version of a superhero movie, not necessarily a bad thing, and possibly a welcome reference to a time when comic books weren't considered high art.

       Superman (David Corenswet) makes an appearance. It’s not exactly a cameo, but Corenswet mostly serves to underscore the contrast between Superman’s Eagle Scout personality and that of his rebellious cousin. Kara insists on calling the Man of Steel by his mild-mannered first name, “Clark.”

         All of this unfolds against a ticking clock. Supergirl has three days to recover the antidote that will save her dog Krypto. Krem fired a weapon that poisoned Krypto, depositing the pooch at death's door. Krypto began his life on Krypton, which means that he can fly, thus saving Kara from having to walk him for exercise.

       A scene in a space bus with a pint-sized (literally) alien conductor proves amusing, but Supergirl seldom soars. When Kara puts on her uniform, battles against evil, and ascends into the sky for a celestial bow, the moment -- like too much of the movie -- feels more like a dutiful acknowledgement of Kara's identity than an exhilarating triumph.

       There are three suns in this universe. On planets with red suns, Supergirl loses her powers. Green-sun planets are even more devastating for her. Kara  operates fully as Supergirl on yellow-sun planets.  

       Should Supergirl become the central figure in future stories, I hope they take place under Earth’s yellow sun, where DC Comics tend to work best.*

*Thanks to the reader who pointed out an initial error I made about the suns in Supergirl. 

    

No hero worship in this 'Robin Hood'

 There's revisionism, and then there's revisionism writ so large that its undermining of expectation becomes a distraction. 

  That's how I felt about director Michael Sarnoski's The Death of Robin Hood, a movie that shreds the Robin Hood myth while asking us to acknowledge the gulf between reality and the stories we tell to mask its brutalities. Five minutes into the unrelieved grimness Sarnoski creates, and you may  find yourself hoping for a bit of illusion.

    Sarnoski, who directed Nicolas Cage as an isolated former chef in Pig, again takes us to a place where possibilities for redemption seem remote, perhaps impossible. This Robin Hood, played by a bearded, grizzled Hugh Jackman, insists that all the stories told about him are fabrications. He sees himself as a thief who terrorized people and killed for the fun of it, more criminal than lovable rogue.

    Sarnoski and cinematographer Pat Scola keep the movie's palette dark and grim, so much so that when sunlight appears, we realize we've lost touch with any form of warmth. Also missing is the verdant foliage of Sherwood Forest. Robin and the other characters are consigned to mud-caked struggles staged on rocky, forbidding landscapes. 

    A tone of brutal realism paves the way for a slender story that introduces us to Little John (Bill Skarsgard). A man devoted to Robin, John has been thwarted in his attempt to lead a normal life with a wife and kids. Margaret (Faith Delaney), one of John's children will figure in the plot when, late in the picture, she looks to Robin for help.

     To hide themselves from foes, Robin and Little John assume aliases. Robin becomes Randolph. Little John tried to lead a straight life as Edward.

    As it turns out, Robin's rampant carnage has left him with a string of revenge seekers, most of them relatives of those he viciously dispatched. In an early battle to recover John's home from invading outlaws,  Robin is badly wounded. 

    After the mayhem, Little John deposits Robin at an island priory and pretty much disappears from the movie.  Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer), a woman with healing powers, presides over the priory where displaced folks seem to have gathered. 

    The spiritual glow of Comer's character reinforces the notion that there's more at stake for Robin than flesh wounds.  He has so damaged his soul that cruelty no longer makes an impression on him. A damaged leg has left him a dead man limping.

      At the priory, Robin also meets a leper (Murray Bartlett), who seems to have a preternatural understanding of Robin's struggle. Struggle may be too strong a word because Jackman makes it seem as if Robin already knows that he's doomed himself. He has slaughtered his own humanity.

      Sarnoski, who also wrote the screenplay, can't embed all his themes in a dramatically evolving way. They sometimes protrude in dialogue like arrows fired by Robin into his victims' heads.  

     Of course, we know where the movie is headed. Sarnoski stages Robin's death scene with poetic gravity and hints of grace. No spoiler here. It would have been the ultimate cheat if Robin didn't die in a movie entitled The Death of Robin Hood.

     Late-picture attempts to show a growing attachment between Robin and Margaret arrive in a low-key fashion that dims optimism for any huge turnaround. As much as possible, Robin responds, helping to make a bow for the child and teaching her how to skin small animals. 

    He also makes an unexpected choice with regard to a  young man (Noah Jupe) who turns up at the priori, looking to avenge the killings inflicted by Robin and Little John on his family during another display of unholy wrath.

    The movie treats its cutthroat Robin with a bit of ambiguity at the end, but for most of the movie, a resigned Robin twists impassively on the spit on which his soul roasts.

    Robin's self-awareness precludes the kind of inner struggle that might have given the movie more spark.  Robin knows he's doomed from the start, a man consumed by a life without conscience, constraint, or compassion. 

     So rather than a drama about a man reckoning with his history, the movie becomes a lugubrious dirge for a man who never was a hero, as well as for the myths that we consume to dull the edges of our own troubling encounters with reality.

    That's a potentially rich idea, but there's monotony in Sarnoski's unrelenting bleakness. Sarnoski tries so hard to give the movie thematic depth that his characters are imprisoned by the concepts the movie considers. This Robin Hood is so defeated by the weight of his past, he might as well be wrapped in a shroud.