11 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week
‘Death of a Unicorn’
On the drive to his boss’s mansion, Elliot (Paul Rudd) hits and nearly kills a unicorn, leading to madcap misadventures in this horror-comedy directed by Alex Scharfman.
From our review:
There’s no real spoiling “Death of a Unicorn,” an unabashedly nonsensical movie that doesn’t take anything too seriously, itself included. There are misty-eyed parent-child moments, digs at the wealthy, nods at the environment. Mostly, though, the whole thing is a wall-to-wall goof, despite the grandeur of its mystical attraction.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
Aging like fine cheese.
‘Holy Cow’
This quaint drama directed by Louise Courvoisier follows Totone (Clément Faveau) as he learns life lessons while trying to produce his own cheese.
From our review:
The low-key charms of the coming-of-age story “Holy Cow” emerge gradually but steadily. Set amid the rolling slopes of the Jura, a mountainous region in eastern France, the movie traces a teenager’s progression from carefree, at times careless youth to adulthood after a life-altering tragedy. That might lead to a rainstorm of tears elsewhere, but this is a world of dry-eyed pragmatism. And here everything does ripen, an eventuality that this movie charts with wry humor, appreciable regional sensitivity and many wheels of artisanal cheese.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A maudlin musical fable.
‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’
An eccentric lottery winner, Charles (Tim Key), invites the members of his favorite folk band (Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan) to his private island for a performance.
From our review:
A damp, rather depressing dirge of unmemorable tunes, unflattering clothing and unexceptional scenery, “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” directed by James Griffiths and expanded from Basden and Key’s 2007 short film, “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island,” strains to fill its running time. Coaxing mild amusement from Charles’s oddball cluelessness and Herb’s reliance on the island’s lone telephone kiosk — shades of “Local Hero” (1983)— the movie fails to police the boundary between sweet and soppy.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
Big dog, big feelings.
‘The Friend’
When her friend and mentor, Walter (Bill Murray), dies, Iris (Naomi Watts) inherits Apollo, his Great Dane.
From our review:
At first the screen adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s exquisite novel of the same name, a quiet miracle woven of wry glances at New York literati and a piercing ache, feels too smooth, too glossy. But if Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the writer-directors, can’t match the novel’s sharp first-person narration, they find the sweet spot between sardonic and openhearted as Iris and Apollo get to know each other, and as she sorts out the complexities of her friendship with Walter.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
Tackling trauma on her own terms.
‘Julie Keeps Quiet’
After her tennis coach is suspended under hushed circumstances, Julie copes in her own way in this subtle drama directed by Leonardo van Dijl.
From our review:
Tessa Van den Broeck, a newcomer, plays Julie with zero affectation. She seems plucked from a high school roll call, or maybe from a film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whose company co-produced this one. Nicolas Karakatsanis’s twilit 35-millimeter cinematography mirrors her character’s preoccupied state, echoed by Caroline Shaw’s cracked-lullaby score. It’s a film that maintains that Julie’s story is available only when she’s ready to tell it.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
Politics personified in an aching romance.
‘Viet and Nam’
This tender drama directed by Truong Minh Quy centers on the title characters, coal miners (played by Duy Bao Dinh Dao and Pham Thanh Hai) who fall in love amid the troubles of war.
From our review:
Quy treats the love affair between Viet and Nam with exquisite tenderness. One of the movie’s scenes — startling for its frankness but also its visual beauty — finds the men reclined in the dark of the mine. The film makes clear that even though Nam and Viet must be wary they are also achingly in love.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Red herring is on the menu.
‘Holland’
When Nancy (Nicole Kidman) suspects her husband (Matthew Macfadyen) is cheating on her, she taps her friend Dave (Gael García Bernal) to investigate.
From our review:
“Holland” is set circa 2000 in Holland, Mich., a real town founded by Dutch settlers and distinguished by its windmill, tulips and other tributes to the Netherlands. Red herring is also on the menu in this second feature from the director Mimi Cave. The film’s unusual backdrop, unresolved subplots and dream-sequence fakeouts are ultimately all distractions from a story that doesn’t make much sense.
Watch on Prime Video. Read the full review.
An actress in the aftermath.
‘Being Maria’
This biopic directed by Jessica Palud follows the actress Maria Schneider (Anamaria Vartolomei) as she reels from filming the sexually explicit “Last Tango in Paris.”
From our review:
Showing how Schneider’s trauma festered over time — and eventually calloused over — the film moodily weaves together scenes of her struggles with addiction, nights at the discothèque and experiences on other movie sets, relying on Vartolomei’s edgy, delicate performance to signal Maria’s underlying anxieties.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
A romance where fact and fiction mingle.
‘Grand Tour’
Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a colonial official stationed in Burma, flees his fiancée, Molly (Crista Alfaiate), when he gets cold feet in this film directed by Miguel Gomes that combines narrative scenes and documentary footage.
From our review:
Cloaking the screen in moody chiaroscuro, Gomes finds mystique in Edward’s stoicism and poetry in Molly’s heartbreak. But “Grand Tour” also complicates this splendor. In pairing scenes of the couple with present-day footage from South and East Asia, Gomes gestures at a troubling history of cinematic distortions.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A feathered friend lends a flipper.
‘The Penguin Lessons’
This charming drama directed by Peter Cattaneo follows Tom (Steve Coogan), a British teacher in Argentina who befriends a penguin he names Juan Salvador and enlists to help win over his students.
From our review:
While Juan Salvador is a shameless exhibitionist, Coogan’s performance is understated; he conveys Tom’s softening without nudging the viewer too much. On the other hand, the misuse of Nick Drake’s “Northern Sky” on the soundtrack is egregious. The rest of the picture is largely winsome and inoffensive.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Works for us!
‘A Working Man’
Jason Statham stars as a construction worker who draws on his violent past to rescue his boss’s daughter from kidnappers.
From our review:
The writer-director David Ayer began his career concocting scripts for action thrillers that put some psychological nuance into their boom-boom pyrotechnics. … It seems as if he threw all that sort of thing out of his tool kit around the time of “Suicide Squad” (2016). Ayer’s pictures are purely blunt-force objects now, and effective ones. And all the more persuasive when Jason Statham stars in them.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Compiled by Kellina Moore.
