'Wrinkle' neither folds nor soars

Visually abundant adaptation of popular novel falls short on wonder..

A New York Times article about the 90th edition of the Academy Awards referred to director Ava DuVernay (13th, Selma) as “one of Hollywood’s most aggressive advocates for diversity.” It only takes a few minutes of the big-screen adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time to know that DuVernay has no qualms about putting her convictions on screen.

A somewhat scattered, effects-laden adaptation of a popular novel by Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time stands as both an adventure fantasy and an overdue helping of diverse casting. Its story sends the child of an interracial couple into alternate universes along with her adopted brother and a white teenage boy.

That’s not to say that A Wrinkle in Time takes diversity as its theme. Like many of the Disney movies that precede it, Wrinkle is an ode to the importance of family, as well as a recasting of a typical hero’s journey.

The movie’s main character — a brainy 13-year-old named Meg (Storm Reid) — faces many tests as she tries to establish herself as a warrior for the light; i.e., all that is good in the universe.

DuVernay has said that her movie primarily aims at 12-year-olds and those able to get into a 12-year-old state of mind. As someone for whom 12 barely exists as a memory, I found the movie to be an elaborate helping of children’s theater that proved wanting at the point when it's supposed to reach its emotional crescendo and a little too vague about what constitutes evil in the movie’s visually abundant universe.

I also found the cosmology depicted in A Wrinkle in Time a bit confusing but that may not matter to young audiences willing to go with flow in order to enjoy the movie's various odd sights: a beach where a character who embodies evil (Michael Pena) turns up or a strange cave-like place that's home to Happy Medium (Zach Galifianakis), a character whose name explains his outlook.

Though it brims with varied settings and costumes, the core of A Wrinkle in Time hinges on a simplistic binary battle between the light and the dark, evil being represented by a spidery looking creation that resembles an ink blot.

Three other-worldly beings serve as guides for young Meg’s journey, which involves something called a “tesseract.” As best as I could discern — and with help from Wikipedia — the tesseract is a phenomenon that creates folds in the fabric of space and time, allowing Meg and her companions to travel through the fifth dimension.

These guides are women with (what else?) special powers. Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) can turn herself into what looks like a giant green leaf that carries the movie’s adventurers like a magic carpet. Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) is a walking Bartlett’s book of quotations; she dispenses the wisdom of others. Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey) seems to materialize out of nothing.

When we first meet Mrs. Which, she’s clad in silver and as tall as one of those balloons in a holiday parade, looming large over everyone else, a visual choice that mirrors Winfrey’s status in the real-life world of media.

Meg’s interplanetary journey is motivated by a devastating loss. Her father (Chris Pine) has been missing for four years as the result of a quest to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Meg was left to make do with her mom (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe).

Meg journeys into other worlds to locate her scientist father and bring him home because, as we long ago learned from the The Wizard of Oz, no matter how intoxicating alternate realities can be, there’s no place like home.

Levi Miller portrays Calvin O’Keefe, a popular teenager who joins outcast Meg on her trippy pursuits, but his character doesn't seem to have much of a role beyond adding someone with whom younger boys may identify.

First seen in Twelve Years A Slave, Reid provides the movie with a solid center. Initially annoying, McCabe’s Charles Wallace grew on me, particularly when his body was taken over by the IT, a disembodied evil that turns him from a brainiac into a painiac.

The movie’s production team does a good job creating wavy wrinkles in time as Meg travels in the fifth dimension, and the movie certainly doesn't lack for other forms of visual invention. My favorite: a rigidly conformist suburban community where every kid stands in a driveway bouncing a beach ball in unison, a twisted idea of playtime.

I suppose the best fantasies create a sense of wonder that Wrinkle in Time can't quite achieve. It's probably not the keenest of critical insights or the heartiest of endorsements, but after a preview screening and a little reflection, I'd say the movie qualifies as "OK." I'd be lying if I didn't say I was hoping for more.

An Oscar night with few surprises

For its 90th anniversary, the Academy Awards showcased an unusually diverse crop of films in an evening that unfolded in utterly predictable fashion.

Marked mostly by an evenness of tone and few memorable displays of personality, the ceremonies took place on one of the most unfortunately garish sets ever. I read that the LA Times had reported that the set was designed to look like the inside of a geode. Question: Why in a year that was supposed to celebrate openness why did Hollywood choose the inside of a rock as its set? Answer: Perhaps because it afforded an opportunity to build a 10-ton proscenium arch made from 45 million crystals.

As for the show …

Jimmy Kimmel opened the proceedings with a relaxed, well-delivered monologue that may not have killed but was funny enough. Kimmel didn’t do much after that, aside from adding a distracting bit in which he took a bunch of stars to a nearby theater to hand out goodies to an audience that was watching a preview showing of director Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time.

For a moment, Kimmel's stunt gave the Oscars a ridiculous game show aura. I don’t know about you, but my list of things I’d hoped never to see includes Lupita Nyong’O handing out Red Vines.

The excursion outside the Dolby Theater wasn't the only game-show-like flare. Kimmel did another bit in which the Oscar recipient who delivered the shortest acceptance speech would receive a Jet Ski. Helen Mirren rode the Jet Ski onto the stage. Oh dignity, where art thou?

References to dreamers, #TimesUp and calls for inclusion were accompanied by a tribute to military-themed movies, a transparent attempt to show that Hollywood isn’t totally full of left-leaning liberals who have no idea what happens in mainstream America.

In the days leading up to the Oscars, prognosticators were calling the best-picture race too-close-to-call, a near dead heat between The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

In the end, Shape of Water won the Oscar for best picture. The movie won four Oscars in all, including best director for Guillermo Del Toro. Del Toro, who grew up in Mexico, proudly and pointedly called himself "an immigrant" in his acceptance speech.

The evening perked up quite a bit with Frances McDormand’s acceptance speech after she took the Oscar for best performance by a lead actress for her work in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

After the customary thanks, McDormand set her Oscar on the stage floor and wound up for what felt like it would be a scolding from a principal at a school assembly. Instead, she asked every female nominee to stand. She not only called for more diversity in movie-making but insisted on it.

McDormand probably also sent viewers to Google to look up the two words with which she ended her speech: “inclusion rider." She was calling for additions to contracts that mandate gender and racial diversity.

Three Billboards, which had both avid supporters and angry detractors, had to content itself with acting Oscars for McDormand, and for Sam Rockwell, who won in the best supporting actor category.

Allison Janney won the best-supporting-actress Oscar for playing Tonya Harding's mother in I, Tonya. Janney began her speech with a memorable first line: "I did all by myself." Of course, she immediately made amends, continuing with the obligatory list of people she needed to thank.

Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek and Annabella Sciorra — three women who have gone public with their accusations of Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct — called for more diversity in film.

This year’s awards seemed to follow a something-for-everyone arc:

-- Many were hoping Get Out would win best picture; it didn't but it did win best original screenplay for writer/director Jordan Peele.

-- Phantom Thread won an Oscar for best costumes.

-- Dunkirk took some technical awards (best editing, best sound editing, and best sound mixing) but couldn’t work its way to the top in the major categories.

-- James Ivory’s adapted screenplay for Call Me By Your Name was recognized, making the 89-year-old screenwriter the oldest person ever to receive an Oscar.

-- Darkest Hour not only netted a best actor Oscar for Gary Oldman -- unrecognizable as Winston Churchill -- but for the folks who did Oldman's phenomenal make-up.

-- No one should have been surprised that A Fantastic Woman, a Chilean movie about a transgender woman who fought with the family of her late lover, took the award for the best foreign-language film. Its victory had been widely predicted.

Lady Bird, an early-season darling that began the evening with five nominations including best picture, went home empty-handed, as did another best-picture nominee, The Post.

I wasn't unhappy that Icarus, which helped call attention to the Russian doping scandal, won an Oscar for best documentary, but I really wanted to see 89-year-old Agnes Varda (Faces Places) give an acceptance speech.

I agree with those who watched the show and suggested that Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph, two of this year's presenters, should be frontrunners to host next year's show.

After last year's fiasco, it probably made sense to have Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announce the best-picture winner. You could almost hear the show's producers calling, "Faye. Warren. Come home. All is forgiven."
I don’t know how many people saw the Oscar shorts programs, but those who did may have been a little surprised to see Kobe Bryant holding an Oscar for Dear Basketball, a self-serving animated short about his love of the game.

During the Oscars, Wesley Morris, who writes for the New York Times, perceptively tweeted: “Kobe Bryant has an Oscar. And Stanley Kubrick does not.”

Oh well, who said anything about Hollywood makes sense?
A complete list of winners can be found in today's edition of Variety.

Oscar looms. Who will win?

Maybe it's me. Or maybe it's the mind-disrupting flood of daily news out of Washington. Maybe it's the skepticism induced by shifting concerns that Hollywood never entirely addresses -- from #OscarsSoWhite to #metoo to #NeverAgain. Or maybe it's the fact that most of the major Oscar-nominated movies qualify as niche efforts, films that either do or could turn up at film festivals, events where Academy Awards once were considered irrelevant in discussions of film art. Or maybe it's the fact that we're all suffering from awards fatigue, already having indulged in the Critics' Choice Awards, the Golden Globes and all the awards given by the industry's various craft unions and guilds -- actors, directors, editors, producers, etc.

Over the years, I've written about the diminishing impact of the Academy Awards and I have no desire to rehash old observations about the dizzying growth of entertainment options that compete with movies or the way celebrity over-exposure has taken much of the thrill out of seeing the stars come out for an evening of high style.

Still, it's the Oscars and the name still evokes nostalgic memories of movie primacy, even as we wonder about the future of big-screen entertainment. And for all the commentary about the ascendance of great and important TV, I wonder if there's an actor or director alive who'd trade an Oscar for an Emmy if given the choice.

But enough of all that.

Among other things, the arrival of Oscar means it's time to make a few predictions, and, as usual, I'll throw in my two cents, which happens to be a little more than I think most Oscar predictions are worth.

So, for what it's worth here are my picks, along with selections of what might happen if I'm wrong.

Best Picture
Lots of observers see this as a too-close-to-call race between Shape of Water and Three Billboards. Wouldn't it be great if vote splitting pushed Get Out to the front of the line?
Will win: I lean toward Shape of Water, but the late ascendance of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri makes the race the most difficult to predict.
Best Actress
Will win: Francis McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Possible upset: Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
Best Actor
Will win: Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Oldman's strongest oppposition: Timothee Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name
Best supporting actress
Will win: Allison Janney, I, Tonya
Janney's strongest opposition: Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Best Supporting Actor
Will win: Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Rockwell's strongest opposition: Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Best director
Will Win: Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
Biggest possibility for an upset: Jordan Peel, Get Out
Best Original Screenplay
Will win: Get Out
Equally strong: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
This is a category that's worth special note as Oscar's evening unfolds. If Three Billboards wins best original screenplay, it may signal that the movie has a real chance to take home best picture.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Will win: Call Me By Your Name
Possible upset: Mudbound
Cinematography
Will win: Blade Runner 2049
In the running: Dunkirk
Animated Feature
Will win: Coco
Possible upset: None
Foreign Language Film
Will win: A Fantastic Woman
Possible upset: The Insult
Documentary
Will Win: Icarus
In contention: Faces Places
As of this writing, weather forecasters are predicting a cold wet evening in Los Angeles for Oscar Sunday. I encourage one and all (myself included) to resist all attempts at metaphor-making.

Do we need a 'Death Wish' reboot?

Bad timing and plain old badness should put the newly minted edition of Death Wish on ice.

It has been roughly 44 years since the release of the original Death Wish, a vengeful bloodbath of a movie that played on widespread fears about urban violence. Charles Bronson starred as a vigilante who "made death wishes come true" for a variety of sneering miscreants.

When the movie was released, Vincent Canby, then the principal film critic of the New York Times, wrote this: "It's a despicable movie, one that raises complex questions in order to offer bigoted, frivolous, oversimplified answers."

Roger Ebert awarded the movie three stars, crediting it for creating "eerie fascination" but also pointing out that Death Wish was "propaganda for private gun ownership and a call to vigilante justice."*

Now comes director Eli Roth's remake starring Bruce Willis. Roth moves the story from New York to Chicago and converts the movie's vigilante from an architect to a surgeon. He also loses anything you might call "eerie fascination" or any other qualities that might be called redeeming.

For those who are unfamiliar with this hoary revenge-fest, it goes like this. A physician and his wife (Elizabeth Shue) are living a happy life in Evanston, Ill. when their home is burglarized by three thugs, a crime that results in the death of the doctor's wife. The family's teenage daughter (Camila Morrone) is also wounded. She winds up in a coma.

Willis' Paul Kersey and his brother (Vincent D'Onofrio) are, of course, inconsolable. Kersey was at work at the time of the burglary, and, therefore, believes he failed in his manly duties to protect home, hearth, and -- of course -- the women in his life.

A couple of Chicago detectives (Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise) are sure they'll catch the killers, but the wheels of justice don't seem to be turning fast enough for Kersey, who -- in this mildly updated 21st century edition -- even visits a therapist.

Frustrated and grief-stricken, Kersey decides to pick up a gun. His actions earn him a nickname: He's the Chicago Grim Reaper, a man who kills only those who deserve punishment. Among the Reaper's victims, an inner-city drug dealer who goes by the name of Ice Cream Man.

Instead of creating sickening urban exploitation, Roth treats audiences to an equally dubious helping of what might be deemed "gun fun," sometimes adding comic spin to the movie's abundant violence. Presumably, we're meant to find visceral satisfaction in Kersey's forays into the night as he dons a hoodie and takes justice into his own hands. Of course, he also hopes to find his wife's killers.

Roth, who has directed horror movies such as Cabin Fever and Hostel, needs no introduction to gore and he dishes out plenty of it, including a gruesome torture sequence in which (spoiler alert) Dr. Kersey slices open a miscreant's sciatic nerve.

Only violently expressed vengeance seems to snap Kersey out of his grief and depression. His vengeful rampage makes him feel better, and his behavior lights up talk radio airwaves as callers are encouraged to debate whether he's a "zero or a hero."

Death Wish has less to say about the agony of grief than about the supposed thrill of rapid gunfire. Moreover, a DYI attempt at dispensing justice by a well-educated white man seems especially tin-eared in the post-Trayvon Martin era. Add Parkland and a heated national conversation about guns and who should wield them, and the movie becomes even more reprehensible.

I'm not sure we ever needed a Death Wish reboot, but we sure as hell don't need one now.

*Thanks to Rotten Tomatoes for the ability to quickly check reviews on older movies.

'Red Sparrow' doesn't fly high

Jennifer Lawrence takes up the role of a Russian spy.

Those damn Russians will stop at nothing when it comes to advancing their cause.

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No, we're not talking about interference in the last presidential election, but about the spycraft that tends to shape relations between Russia and the rest of the world.

Of course, we're also talking about a movie in which the Russians have invented a special spy-training agency that teaches men and women the fine arts of seduction and manipulation. Humiliation and intimidation are used to turn female students into "whores" for the Motherland, wiping out any traces of propriety or pity.

Those who make it out of the program are called Sparrows.

The aptly titled Red Sparrow stars Jennifer Lawrence as Dominika Egorova, who -- at the movie's outset -- is an acclaimed star of the Bolshoi ballet. Dominika’s career comes to an abrupt end when her leg is broken by a clumsy dance partner during a performance.

Eager to preserve her Bolshoi privileges — mostly for the sake of her ailing mother — Dominika follows the advice of her sleazy uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts), a man who happens to be a part of the Russian intelligence establishment. Without knowing exactly what's involved, Dominika agrees to be trained as a Sparrow.

Working with director Francis Lawrence, who directed Lawrence in a couple of Hunger Games movies, Lawrence (Jennifer, that is) has no trouble portraying a powerful woman who learns to walk the fine line between convincing her superiors that she’s all in with the Sparrow program and trying to preserve some of her personal integrity.

That’s no easy task considering she’s working for a branch of the intelligence service that believes her body belongs to the state.

Added to the mix are an American CIA agent (Joel Edgerton) who offers Dominika a way out of her complicated predicament, Dominika’s hardened instructor in Sparrow World (Charlotte Rampling), another Russian intelligence agency big-wig (Jeremy Irons) and the head of Russian intelligence (an under-utilized Ciaran Hinds).

Much has been written about Lawrence’s nude scene, which reveals most (but not all) of an actress who certainly has the charisma and smarts to carry a movie that’s presumably trying to attain franchise status. Lawrence creates a bold, sexy character who's also capable of calculated bursts of fury.

Unfortunatley, Lawrence isn't enough to save the day. A convoluted plot, boiled down from a novel by Jason Matthews, results in an often murky spy drama enriched by a variety of locations — from Moscow to Budapest.

The movie attempts a somewhat tepid romance between Edgerton’s CIA man, a character who finds himself on the outs with the CIA after he blows his cover protecting a source. Edgerton gives a muted performance that dampens any sparks that could have enlivened his relationship with Dominika. p>
The movie's atmosphere isn’t one defined by virtue. Many of the characters are advancing personal agendas, notably, an American traitor portrayed by Mary-Louise Parker who has possession of floppy discs that both the Russians and Americans are eager to get their hands on.

There’s no point dwelling on a plot that generates too little suspense, but it should be noted that Red Sparrow includes a brutal scene of torture which many will find difficult to watch.

Downbeat and doom-struck, Red Sparrow doesn’t reflect the kind of intricate intelligence that defines spy movies adapted, say, from the work of author John LeCarre nor does it offer the brash pleasures of overstated action we associate with movies with blockbuster aspirations.

The result: A medium-grade thriller that relies on Lawrence and a reliable cast, but which comes off as watered-down and more than a bit weary.

A child goes missing, a society is revealed

A couple in the Russian movie Loveless proves profoundly neglectful.

No one who sees the Russian movie Loveless will find the title misleading.

Director Andrey Zvyaginstev (Leviathan) skillfully paints a powerful portrait of characters for whom self-interest trumps everything — even the welfare of a child.

Full of chilly winter images, Loveless tells the story of two warring parents (Alexey Rozin and Maryana Spivak), a husband and wife so preoccupied with their own lives that they’ve become indifferent to the life of Alyosha (Matvey Novikov), their 12-year-old son. Early on we see the boy standing in a darkened corner of his parents' Moscow apartment; he cries as they engage in a vituperative battle.

Not long after this painful night, the boy goes missing.

But Loveless isn’t so much about the search for the boy as it is about the lives of two people who clearly never should have been parents in the first place. Rozin’s Borris worries that his boss, a staunch Christian, will fire him if he learns about Borris’ impending divorce.

For her part, Spivak’s Zhenya alternates between fury at her estranged husband and involvement in a relationship with a new lover (Andris Keisha), a guy who seems to have a bit of money and who expresses no interest in her role as a mother.

Boris, too, has taken up another relationship. He’s already gotten a woman named Masha (Marina Vasilyeva) pregnant. She's pushing for all his attention.

Zvyaginstev, who allows images to linger to the breaking point, seems less interested in making a police procedural — the police eventually become involved in the search for the boy — than in creating a grim picture of society in which values have dangerously eroded.

The fate of poor Alyosha makes itself felt in nearly every frame of Loveless — even when the movie's focus is elsewhere. That's part of why Zvyaginstev succeeds in indicting not only two horrible parents but the society whose values — or lack of them — produced such terrible neglect.

For the record: Loveless earned a spot as one of this year’s five nominees for a foreign-language Oscar.

'Party' guests are out for blood

Despite a strong cast, director Sally Potter's arch little movie takes us nowhere we haven't been before.

It concerns me to know that I’ve sometimes felt the way Timothy Spall looks in The Party, a slender black comedy filmed in black-and-white. But even at a shockingly brief one hour and 11 minutes, The Party feels as if it could have been condensed into a 40-minute short as it builds toward a nifty punchline.

Spall, who has never projected so much doom and futility, portrays a British academic whose doctor has given him a fatal diagnosis. Haggard and expressionless, Spall’s Bill seems the personification of pitiless depression.

Joining Spall's Bill in this happily bitter ensemble piece are his wife Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) and a variety of friends: the catty, mordant April (Patricia Clarkson), her bromide-spouting boyfriend (Bruno Ganz), a coke-snorting financial executive (Cillian Murphy), and a lesbian couple portrayed by Cherry Jones and Emily Mortimer.

The group has gathered to celebrate Janet’s appointment to a ministerial post in the department overseeing Britain's health.

The movie revolves around Albee-style insults that the characters hurl at one another while harboring secrets that will be revealed as the movie builds toward its final surprise.

Part of the trouble with movies such as The Party is that they seem to ask us to feel superior to their embittered, pretentious characters while creating few points of real identification.

Directed by Sally Potter, who also wrote the screenplay, The Party's main thrust -- the celebration that goes terribly wrong -- feels awfully familiar. Clarkson deftly delivers her character’s withering lines and Spall convincingly dangles at the end of his character’s rope, but The Party passes without arriving at a consequential destination.

Imaginative highs and consternation

Annihilation casts Natalie Portman as a biologist who combats a strange extraterrestrial force.

Director Alex Garland follows 2015’s brilliant Ex Machina with a movie that’s likely to provoke equal amounts of consternation and pleasure. In Annihilation, a loose adaptation of the first in a sci-fi trilogy by author Jeff VanderMeer, Garland imagines a world in which a mysterious and unwanted guest — dubbed The Shimmer — arrives on Earth. A viscous-looking force field, The Shimmer seems to be an extraterrestrial visitor that possesses staggering disruptive powers -- and it's spreading.

As a great admirer of Ex Machina, I found myself accumulating an increasingly mixed response to Annihilation, fascination and dread accompanied by a sense of disconnection as I vainly waited for the movie to gather something resembling profound force -- or at least the illusion of such force.

In what amounts to a prologue, Garland introduces us to Lena (Natalie Portman), a grieving biologist who teaches at Johns Hopkins University. Lena’s husband (Oscar Isaac), a soldier, has been missing for about a year. The two met when Lena also served in the Army.

One day, Isaac’s character mysteriously reappears. He doesn’t seem to remember where he’s been; his face has the blank look of someone who has been anesthetized. Suddenly, he begins bleeding from the mouth and must be rushed to a hospital.

At this point, Lena and her husband are spirited off to an outpost that seems strangely removed from anything resembling normal life. Lena learns that her husband is on life support and that she inadvertently has involved herself in a government effort to understand The Shimmer.

It doesn’t take long for Lena to join the latest expedition that's about to enter The Shimmer in an attempt to reach the spot where it first landed, a lighthouse.

Movies long have sent small patrols on dangerous missions, offering violent shocks along the way. Annihilation distinguishes itself by sending an all-female cast into the fray. Lena joins forces with a paramedic (Gena Rodriguez); a physicist (Tessa Thompson, and an anthropologist (Tuva Novotny). Skilled in the use of combat weapons, the women are led by a psychologist who previously selected those who would enter the Shimmer. So far, only Lena's broken husband has returned from such a mission.

It’s worth pointing out that Gena specializes in cellular-level investigations of cancer: Perhaps The Shimmer can be seen as a kind of traveling intergalactic cancer that has invaded the Earth. It has begun to mess up the DNA of both plants and animals, producing unholy combinations, interspecies creatures such as a giant albino alligator with the teeth of a shark or a bear whose bite may remind you of the creature in Alien.

The movie's attacks are graphically presented and geared to producing knots in most stomachs.

Garland’s greatest achievement involves the creation of the world inside The Shimmer, a multi-colored fungal paradise where dangers lurk and everything feels a few clicks away from normalcy. You almost can feel the dampness as the quintet of women moves deeper into The Shimmer's embrace.

The movie’s atmosphere feels strange and novel, but even as it seeps into your pores, some conventional conflicts emerge, well conveyed by the movie's players. Of these, Portman portrays the character with the most extensive backstory. Her stated reason for entering The Shimmer: To save her husband, which also means saving her marriage. I won't say more.

Garland wisely refuses to explain The Shimmer, allowing it and us to wallow in ambiguity. Is it a living thing? Does it have desires or is it simply a wanton force that indifferently spreads genetic nihilism?

It’s always precarious to try to read the mood of a preview audience, but I’d say that Annihilation came to an end without creating a widely shared response among those who had just seen it. Speculation on my part, of course, but you usually can tell when a movie has connected with an audience — even if you’re not on the receiving end of that connection.

There are reasons that audiences may be put-off. Garland tells much of the story in flashbacks as men in Hazmat suits question Lena. These intermittent interrogations stall the movie's narrative engine. It’s also possible that the movie's finale is too ambiguous to produce a collective “wow.”

Annihilation follows Lena to the end of the story; the result is creepy enough but it’s not clear that Annihilation will produce many blown minds. Maybe this is a case where laudable ambitions couldn't carry Garland far enough to make us more than interested -- if perplexed -- tourists in a weirdly conceived world. There, basic elements shatter and recombine in ways that, like the movie, startle and intrigue without ultimately cohering.

A look at three Palestinian women

In Between focuses on life for Arab women in Tel Aviv.

If at least two of the Palestinian women in the movie In Between didn’t live in Tel Aviv, you might have a difficult time telling them apart from any other women their age. And that may be the point of director Maysaloun Hamoud's keenly observed slice of Arab life in contemporary Israel. I especially value movies such as Hamoud's because they’re committed to the kind of statement that cinema always needs and too seldom makes: This -- the filmmaker says -- is how we live.

To start the cultural pot boiling, Hamoud introduces a new element into the lives of two roommates. The apparently religious Noor (Shaden Kanboura) moves in with two boldly secular women: Mouna Hawa's Leila, a lawyer who works on criminal cases, and Sana Jammelieh's Salma, an aspiring DJ who has held a variety of jobs. She's also a lesbian.

Noor, a student of computer science, takes up residence with these mismatched companions after her cousin moves out of the apartment and recommends that Noor, claiming to be bothered by dormitory noise, take her place.

Perhaps this unseen cousin had something more in mind than providing Noor with a good environment for study. Maybe she wanted to broaden Noor's exposure to a life about which she knows little.

Not surprisingly, Noor and her new roommates don’t always see eye-to-eye about how women ought to behave. The differences can lead to conflicts, mostly presented with a sympathy for both sides and without sitcom-like exaggeration.

The men in Hamoud’s movie represent different poles of male dominance. Wissam (Henry Andrawes), Noor’s tyrannical fiance, rigorously objects to her association with these free-spirited, independent-minded women.

The other important man in the movie — Mahmud Shalaby’s Ziad — is attracted to Leila and she to him, but eventually, Hamoud tests Mahmud's willingness to support Leila’s independence.

The story expands to include contacts with Noor and Salma’s respective families and, as a result, shows both the religious and social diversity of Israel’s Palestinian population.

Both the Christian and Islamic traditionalists we meet tend to view Leila and Salma as corrupted and perhaps beyond redemption. To the Western eye — at least to my Western eye — they could be young women living just about anywhere.

The movie includes a disturbing scene about which little should be revealed to avoid spoilers, and although Hamoud clearly sides with these women, she’s in tune with the complexities that challenge all of her characters.

In Between has the feel of lives depicted by someone who understands the difficulties of living under the strains of being an Arab in Israel and of dealing with a tradition-bound society that has difficulty accommodating women who want to chart their own courses. The result is engaging, lively and tough-minded enough to earn serious attention.