Hulu
With his magnificent vérité documentaries “The Waiting Room” (2012) and “The Force” (2017), Oakland, Calif.-based filmmaker Peter Nicks has created immersive portraits of two of the city’s most beleaguered institutions: a hospital emergency room and police department, respectively. With “Homeroom,” Nicks rounds out his Oakland trilogy with an affecting portrait of high school seniors weathering an onslaught of pressures — from family tensions to college applications — amid a chronically under-resourced school system. Nicks takes viewers into his subjects’ lives with his usual candor and compassion, chronicling their school year with deep-focus attention until the kids’ phones start to blow up, first about an oncoming pandemic, then with the killing of George Floyd. “Homeroom” doesn’t have the structural elegance or cohesion of his first two films, which is entirely appropriate given the head-spinning circumstances of its production. This is a moving, mournful testament to youth, in all its heedless spontaneity and surprising grit. “Homeroom” is a film that’s every bit as fractured, freighted and fleetingly gratifying as the year in which it was made. TV-MA. Available on Hulu. Contains obscenity. 91 minutes.
— Ann Hornaday
Yannis Drakoulidis
Netflix
John David Washington in “Beckett.”
The sophomore feature by filmmaker Ferdinando Cito Filomarino (the second unit director for Luca Guadagnino, who is one of this film’s producers) “Beckett” is a paranoid thriller following an American tourist in Greece (John David Washington) who becomes caught up in a political conspiracy after his girlfriend (Alicia Vikander) is killed in a tragic accident. Cito Filomarino creates a nicely disorienting atmosphere as Washington’s Beckett navigates a web of deception and mystery, heightened by the country’s complex politics, our protagonist’s language barrier and his dazed state — the result of post-accident painkillers and his girlfriend’s leftover Ambien. (At times, it seems as if Beckett is in a waking dream.) Injured and struggling to escape armed pursuers as he tries to make his way to the American embassy in Athens, where he expects aid and sanctuary — always a mistake in movies like this — Becket slowly uncovers a secret that gives him, and the film, laserlike focus in the third act. “Beckett” is a competent genre exercise. It doesn’t have much to say, but it says it with style and a mood of jangly, sustained nervous tension.
TV-MA. Available on Netflix. Contains violence, strong language and brief sensuality. In English and some un-subtitled Greek.
109 minutes.
— Michael O’Sullivan
Chris Stephens
Magnolia Pictures
Udo Kier in “Swan Song.”
German actor Udo Kier has worked with some of cinema’s edgiest renegades, from Andy Warhol and Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Gus Van Sant and Lars von Trier. That subversive résumé hovers over “Swan Song” like a benevolent mist of fond, slightly naughty memories. Kier plays Pat Pitsenbarger, a once sought-after Sandusky, Ohio hairdresser who now lives in catatonic boredom in a nursing home outside town. When he’s called upon to touch up a former client for her funeral, Pat embarks on a day-long journey of mourning, resentment, vindication and self-discovery. Writer-director Todd Stephens never finds the right pacing or tone for “Swan Song,” which is too often stodgy where it should sparkle. (The maudlin ballads that dominate the soundtrack don’t help.) The inevitable friends that Pat meets (or re-meets) along the way are played by the likes of Jennifer Coolidge and “Ugly Betty’s” Michael Urie, but their comic gifts are almost entirely wasted in mopey roles. Thankfully, Kier comes out unscathed. He proves understatedly adept at Pat’s deadpan, self-aware wit, when his past outrageousness comes out to play; with his slightly bulging blue eyes, watering from his character’s ever-present More cigarette, Kier imbues his character with equal parts sadness and
diva-esque defiance. “Swan Song” is far from perfect, but it pays appropriate tribute to a generation of people who might have been relegated to the closet, but never let it box them in. Unrated. Available on demand; also opening Friday at Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema and the Cinema Arts Theatre. Contains pervasive smoking and mature themes.
105 minutes.
— A.H
Also streaming
Gravitas Ventures
Kelsey Grammer plays a U.S. congressman in “Charming the Hearts of Men.”
Kelsey Grammer and Anna Friel star in “Charming the Hearts of Men,” a romantic dramedy set in the 1960s, against the backdrop of the struggle for women’s rights. Unrated. Available on demand. 107 minutes.
Memento Films International
From left: Benjamin Lavernhe, Noémie Merlant and Niels Schneider in “Curiosa.”
Inspired by the life of the Parisian poet, photographer and dandy Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925), the French erotic drama “Curiosa” tells the story of a love triangle — or rather love quadrangle — between Pierre (Niels Schneider), his model and lover (Camélia Jordana), Pierre’s true love, Maria (Noémie Merlant), and the man Maria married for money, not love (Benjamin Lavernhe). Unrated. Available at virtualavalon.org. In French with subtitles. 107 minutes.
Screen Media Films
John Boyega, right, and Olivia Cooke in “Naked Singularity.”
John Boeyga plays Casi, an overworked New York public defender in “Naked Singularity,” a sci-fi-tinged crime thriller that follows Casi as he becomes embroiled in a drug heist engineered by a former client, Lea (Olivia Cooke). The New York Times writes: “It’s a workable hook, and Boyega is more than capable of garnering our sympathy; but “Naked Singularity” (adapted from Sergio De La Pava’s 2013 novel) never convincingly links both sides of Casi’s imploding world. (The science fiction is no more than woo-woo pronouncements from a baked friend played by Tim Blake Nelson.)” R. Available on demand;also opening at area theaters. Contains strong language throughout, some violence, sexual references and drug use.
93 minutes.
Kino Lorber
Alec Utgoff in “Never Gonna Snow Again.”
Poland’s official submission to the 93rd Oscars, “Never Gonna Snow Again” tells the story of a mysterious migrant masseur (Alec Utgoff of “Stranger Things”) who upends the lives of his wealthy clients with his almost magical abilities and hypnotic presence. The social satire is director Malgorzata Szumowska’s “most compelling and hauntingly realized film to date,” according to Variety, but is also “so rich in sociopolitical allusions and delicate, shivery modulations of mood that not all of its script’s manifold ideas have full room to bloom.” Unrated. Available at virtualavalon.org. In Polish, Russian, french and Vietnamese with subtitles. 113 minutes.
"Movies" - Google News
August 12, 2021 at 09:04PM
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New movies to stream from home this week. - The Washington Post
"Movies" - Google News
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