Film Reviews

In "Boys State," a documentary streaming on Apple TV+, 1,000 or so high school juniors come together in Texas for a week-long program in which they build their own state government and run for governor in mock elections. How they go about it inevitably reflects the state of participatory politics in supposedly adult America. It is not a pretty picture.

Ron Howard's "Rebuilding Paradise," a fine National Geographic documentary, reconstructs the 2018 wildfire that destroyed the town of Paradise in the foothills of Northern California. The film also has something to say, however indirectly, about our own rebuilding effort, once the pandemic is behind us, and about even greater challenges to come.

"Radioactive," a biopic that starts to be about Marie Curie, can't resist a cause-and-effect survey of radiation that extends as far afield as Hiroshima, the Nevada Proving Ground and Chernobyl. But Rosamund Pike's vivid performance as the peerless scientist and two-time Nobel Prize winner comes close to redeeming the whole production.

A Netflix documentary, "Father Soldier Son," spans almost a decade as it tracks a former platoon sergeant, gravely wounded in Afghanistan, and the two young sons who adore him.

"Greyhound," with Tom Hanks as a destroyer captain during the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II, brings an action adventure to home screens. But it also reminds us how much we've lost with the closing of theaters and their huge screens.

"The Audition" stars the great German actress Nina Hoss as a violin teacher determined to turn a tender young student into a virtuoso.

"Babyteeth" is a debut feature from Australia, and what a debut: Shannon Murphy, who's never done a full-length film before, directed from a screenplay by Rita Kalnejais. The genre is familiar, a lovely young girl with a disease that may kill her, but that's where the familiarity ends and a wonderfully unpredictable tragicomedy begins. The girl, Milla, is played by Eliza Scanlen, who was so radiant as Beth in Greta Gerwig's "Little Women." Toby Wallace is remarkable as Moses, the whacked-out...

Spike Lee's "Da 5 Bloods," streaming on Netflix, is sprawling, enthralling and essential viewing. It comes on as an action adventure--a group of black Vietnam vets go back to Vietnam to find the remains of their squad leader and the gold bullion he helped them bury. But it's really about black lives--how much they matter, what blacks have endured in America's past and where they belong in its turbulent present.

"Shirley," a free-form fictional biopic about the writer Shirley Jackson, has two main settings: Bennington, Vermont, where, in the 1960s, her husband teaches English at Bennington College, and the turbulent landscape of Shirley's inner life, where she struggles with the same demons that populate her stories and books.

Can the theatrical experience survive? Movie theaters will reopen sometime soon, though not all of them, but the streaming revolution was changing viewing habits long before the pandemic, and has only gained force, and converts, since the coronavirus struck. Balancing the gains and losses is hard for a child of the movie palaces.

Every few years since they joined forces to do "The Trip" in 2010, the English funnymen Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have done another installment--"The Trip To Italy" followed by "The Trip To Spain." The latest and final one, "The Trip To Greece," follows their formula of visiting photogenic spots, eating fancy meals and talking funny talk that includes spot-on celebrity impressions. After this there'll be no one to do Michael Caine except Michael Caine.

In less than four minutes, on Super 8 film, Spike Lee has captured the pain and surreal stillness of New York's pandemic moment.

"Saint Frances" is a feature debut for its director, Alex Thompson, and its writer, Kelly O'Sullivan, who also co-stars with a remarkable child actor named Ramona Edith Williams. They play, respectively, Bridget, a nanny, and Frances, the kid who changes the nanny's life. "Mary Poppins" it is not.

"Deerskin" is a tale of murderous obsession and a deerskin jacket, though not in that order. The star is Jean Dujardin, who won an Oscar in 2012 for his buoyantly funny portrayal of George Valentin, a silent-film actor on the way down. Once again he's playing a Georges, with an 's' but without the buoyancy.

"Circus of Books," a new Netflix documentary, centers on an old West Hollywood landmark, the porn shop on the corner of La Jolla and Santa Monica Boulevard. But the center of the center is about prejudice, and how it can arise in the unlikeliest places.

In "Selah and the Spades," Tayarisha Poe's impressive debut feature, a tyrannical teen rules the prep-school roost.

At a time when the luckier among us are having food, booze and even weed delivered to their doorsteps, movies about delivery services may be a fitting accompaniment. ("Deliverance" isn't one of them.)

Look outside your window these days and what you see is a sci-movie with silent streets devoid of life. Here are a few movies that have turned empty cities into art.

"Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution," evokes the history of a camp for disabled kids that flourished in the Catskills in the 1960s and 1970s. More than a camp, though, it was a seedbed for radical political action. The film streams on Netflix.

What's a movie lover to do? No new openings because theaters are shutting down for the duration. But new releases are coming. It will just take a week or so before they find their way to video on demand. Meanwhile, a few ideas for streaming in the madness of our moment.