Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Parasite” will be the top-grossing foreign language film at the 2019 American box office, and deservedly so. Joon-ho Bong’s most satisfying and accomplished movie since “Mother” in 2009, “Parasite” is the first Korean film to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. A perfectly-tuned, midnight-black fairy tale of two families — one wealthy, one struggling — Bong’s story treats poverty, class, and class warfare in parallel brushstrokes to the literal upstairs/downstairs and aboveground/underground picture painted by Jordan Peele in “Us.” The two movies would make a terrific double feature.

A deceptively simple infiltration plot explains the choice of title, as one by one, the brother, sister, mother and father of the just-scraping-by Kim family enter the employ of the wealthy Parks. The initial trick, of course, is that the Parks don’t know that any of the Kims are related to one another. Bong does Hitchcock proud by nudging us at first toward a sympathetic impression of the manipulators, convincing the viewer to excuse the violations of honesty and ethics in part because of the wide gulf between the haves and the have-nots. To Bong’s great credit, however, a dynamic begins to unfold that complicates any black and white stereotyping of rich and poor.

Bong is also a master builder in the specialties of composition and atmosphere, and one of the visual delights of “Parasite” is a study in contrasts framed by the massive windows in the two featured dwellings. The cluttered, garden-level rooms inhabited by the members of the Kim family look out past a clothesline of drying socks into a dirty street where a stumbling drunkard often relieves himself in full view. At the impossibly clean, architect-designed Park house, the living room also faces a huge glass wall, but this one observes the manicured lawn and sculpted hedge of a private backyard. Both of those giant rectangles are like movie screens, and what they reveal to the characters is as entertaining as any cinema.

Bong has many delicious surprises in store, and along the way stuffs “Parasite” with scenes that add wonderful little twists to well-worn tropes. Characters quickly scurry and scramble under beds and tables to avoid detection, and we hold our breath and remain perfectly still in solidarity with the hidden. In one such bravura moment, a horny Dong-ik Park (Sun-kyun Lee) initiates some hilariously specific carnal contact with wife Yeon-kyo (Yeo-jeong Cho) on the sofa while son Da-song (Hyeon-jun Jung) camps just outside in a tipi. Bong ratchets up the fear of getting caught by doubling it, and then tripling it, with some gonzo “Mission: Impossible” flair.

Like the Master of Suspense before him, Bong effortlessly blends the horrific and the comic en route to the icebox talk that has us questioning our own attitudes and beliefs through the unanswered mysteries of the story. The ridiculousness of the Kims folding pizza delivery boxes to make ends meet while a chemical spray of insecticide fogs them with “free extermination” contrasts sharply with the shocking events that will later release so much tension (and the toilet that will release so much sewage). Despite an overwhelmingly positive critical response to the movie, some writers have taken Bong to task, ala Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” for making a simplistic faux-cautionary tale that cloaks aspirational fantasy in the guise of a more rebellious takedown of capitalism. Fortunately, “Parasite” is sophisticated enough to support more nuanced interpretations.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Nearly forty years after Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror film conjured thousands of nightmares, director Mike Flanagan wakes up belated sequel “Doctor Sleep,” the strongest work of his promising career. Smartly striking a balance between the iconic status of Kubrick’s sound and vision and the Stephen King signatures that spread out to connect many people, places, and things — as seen, for example, in Andy Muschietti’s sprawling telling of “It” — Flanagan threads the needle to please more than one group of emotionally-invested followers. The filmmaker also wrote the screenplay, and despite significant changes to the story told in the novel, he honors the spirit of King’s spirits as well as Kubrick’s restless demons.

King is nothing if not handy with the clever moniker, and the title of the book and the movie refers to the macabre nickname of the now grown-up Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), an alcoholic with some daddy issues and serious PTSD. The adventure, however, is shared by two key protagonists. Arguably, the most important character is Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a girl with the same kind of supernatural “shining” gifts as Dan. The powerful penpals form a bond through psychic communication while a dangerous gang of scream-eating, pain-drinking, vampire-like predators known as the True Knot draws ever closer. In a weird way, Flanagan might have inadvertently made the best X-Men movie to date.

The True Knot is led by seductive child-killer Rose the Hat, and she is played by the wonderful Rebecca Ferguson as a rather spectacular mashup of Kiefer Sutherland’s Lost Boy David and Mathilda May’s relentless “Lifeforce” essence-drainer — with a dash of Anne Rice and at least a hint of Lena Olin’s fellow bohemian in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” Like all appealing villains, Rose manages to project enough familiar longing for the viewer to be able to relate to her desire to live, even if we don’t condone her evil means. Ferguson just about walks off with the whole works.

King’s longtime disdain for Kubrick’s brilliant film is the stuff of horror movie legend, and a number of pieces have already outlined the careful manner in which Flanagan honors both entities (as well as the less essential, three-episode, 1997 ABC miniseries). Cinematically speaking, Kubrick’s genius and influence persist. Rodney Ascher’s documentary “Room 237” is must-watch, film geek, conspiracy theory territory. In a big red valentine from Steven Spielberg, “Ready Player One” swapped out the “Blade Runner” sim of the novel for a thrilling Overlook dark ride. And just this year, the Pixar team squeezed several references into, of all things, “Toy Story 4.”

Flanagan always does his homework, and our return visit to the scariest hotel in Colorado is a wonderland of reconstruction. When Rose gazes upon those gushing elevator doors, her face lights up with awe, a smile curling her lips. Many viewers will share that look. Hallorann, Wendy, Jack, the Grady twins, and many more remind us why it’s so hard to quit roaming those halls — Danny Lloyd even makes a cameo appearance — and why Flanagan reconfigured King canon to make his version. That “Doctor Sleep” doesn’t in any way detract from or diminish the 1980 masterwork is a genuine compliment.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Fans of Robert Eggers’ brilliant feature debut “The Witch” have been waiting impatiently for “The Lighthouse,” and while the filmmaker decidedly avoids any kind of sophomore slide, the new movie will probably not attract the widespread fervor and devotion bestowed upon Black Phillip, Thomasin, and company. In “The Witch,” Eggers applied dialect evoking 1630s New England, and “The Lighthouse” follows suit with some wonderfully inscrutable 19th century nautical nonsense. Brother Max Eggers co-wrote the screenplay, and a note in the end crawl acknowledges the variety of sources for the idiosyncratic vocabulary of Willem Dafoe’s Thomas Wake and Robert Pattinson’s Ephraim Winslow, the tortured souls whose sanity starts to leak at the coastal Maine location of the title.

While “The Witch” included well-placed smatterings of macabre humor, “The Lighthouse” will play as an outright comedy for many. The change in tone turns out to be Eggers’ finest trick, freeing the filmmaker from expectations to stick with the formula of serious, mounting dread. Fully committed, Dafoe and Pattinson are terrific fun together. The former’s Wake is an absolutely delightful caricature of every pipe-chomping, pop-eyed sea dog from Ahab to Horatio McCallister, and the latter’s “timber man” Winslow slow-boils to perfection at each new indignity and humiliation leveled at him by his superstitious, flatulent boss.

I certainly won’t be the only observer to wonder whether Eggers should be publicly thanking Guy Maddin for having already concocted the ultimate hallucinatory, black-and-white, silent film-inspired, lighthouse-set fever dream of mania and madness, but I gotta spill my beans: “The Lighthouse” owes a deep, seagull-fouled cistern of gratitude to “Brand upon the Brain!” (2006). In a perfect world, some future programmer will set up a double feature and invite guests to attend in costume. Additional influences already identified by Eggers and others include Herman Melville (obviously), Ingmar Bergman, Fritz Lang, G. W. Pabst, Jean Epstein, Jean Gremillon, and Sarah Orne Jewett. It’s a deep bench.

“The Lighthouse” explores several classic themes of maritime literature: the burden of isolation from community, the dynamics of a complex superior/subordinate relationship, and the homoerotic impulses common to spheres from which females are excluded. The path connecting sexual fantasy and any-port-in-a-storm actuality is beautifully blurry. Both men express themselves in several ways as carnal creatures, and Ephraim’s vigorous, animalistic masturbation while fondling his hand-carved mermaid fetish is one of many ways Eggers expresses an almost tactile fascination with fluids. Spittle, vomit, fecal waste, and tears (from within) join nature’s lashes of rain and seawater (from without) as a constant threat to order and equilibrium.

“The Witch” may be the superior film, but “The Lighthouse” sees Eggers growing by leaps and bounds as a storyteller and visual stylist. The squarish frame magnifies the escalating emotional tension. Inky details and shadings of grayscale are intensified with the application of a custom orthochromatic filter. Dreamlike imagery hovers in the liminal passageway between ecstatic religious/mythological iconography and literal nightmare visions. Eggers is a major talent, and “The Lighthouse” — like his feature debut — inspires much conversation and invites multiple viewings.

As the story unfolds, Eggers almost effortlessly conveys our curiosities about the veil separating the corporeal and the ethereal. It doesn’t matter whether the film’s many supernatural encounters exist only in the imaginations of the lighthouse keepers. If we were in their place, Eggers argues, wouldn’t we also be as attracted to the dazzling illumination flooding from the Fresnel prisms in that tower’s carefully-guarded lantern room?

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Ten years later, Ruben Fleischer returns to the apocalyptic landscape of his funny, fresh, and winning feature debut “Zombieland,” but the “Double Tap” fails to live up to the quality of the inaugural outing. The principal quartet of performers — three Oscar nominees and one winner — are game, but the screenplay by Dave Callaham and original writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, leaves Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone), Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), and Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) stuck in a familiar loop. Despite the warmed-up leftovers, the movie manages to locate a few bright spots, and none are more appealing than Zoey Deutch. As pink-loving, mall-dwelling moron Madison, Deutch manages the near impossible: she adds empathy and wit to what would otherwise be a broad stereotype.

The first “Zombieland” based much of its successful formula on self-awareness, and the sequel continues in that vein. Logic, however, is another matter entirely. Does it make sense that Wichita and Little Rock would pull up stakes and abruptly forge ahead on their own (making off with Tallahassee’s custom ride no less)? If belief is to be suspended, the now-grown younger sister seeks her first taste of romance while Wichita flees from a marriage proposal and the stale routine she shares with the safe and predictable Columbus. The couple’s bed barely has time to get cold before convenient placeholder Madison arrives to keep Columbus company.

The ensuing triangle mimics many of the tried and true conventions of the 1930s screwball comedy, especially its interest in the complications and/or love-and-hate riffs played out in classics like “Trouble in Paradise” and “Libeled Lady.” It may be a stretch to link a contemporary zombie trifle to the work of Lubitsch and Conway, but Deutch and Stone deliver their respective jabs with arch comic timing that often channels originators like Jean Harlow, Miriam Hopkins, and Myrna Loy. Some of the most entertaining scenes in “Double Tap” capitalize on Eisenberg’s hangdog expressions of guilt. Breslin, meanwhile, is treated as an afterthought. Separated from the core group, she disappears for long stretches.

In 2009, “Zombieland” already owed something significant to “Shaun of the Dead,” and the appearance in “Double Tap” of Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch as dead ringers for Tallahassee and Columbus ranks among the movie’s least inspired choices. Even worse is the inexplicable decision to set some of the action at the White House without even a trace of the kind of political satire that should have been centralized. Harrelson’s “nut up or shut up” barbarian so readily suggests a kind of Second Amendment MAGA parody that “Double Tap” practically begs for some kind of pertinent commentary that never materializes.

Most curious of all, “Double Tap” spends more time ignoring the clear and present danger of the undead to focus on the rambling road trip undertaken to retrieve Little Rock from a neo-hippie enclave called Babylon (pronounced Baby Lon by Madison). The safe haven is run by nitwits who inexplicably melt down any gun that makes it to the front gate. We are told that a new strain of resilient zombie poses a grave threat, and we witness one shoot-’em-up set piece to visualize that risk, but “Double Tap” is unconcerned with reanimated corpses until it reaches the expected conclusion.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Julia Hart’s “Fast Color” moved quickly and too quietly from South by Southwest debut to skinny theatrical engagements via Lionsgate’s Codeblack to home video. Several articles have already lamented the disappointing 77K box office take, wondering how such an intelligent spin on the indie superhero genre failed to make a bigger splash with viewers. Whatever the reason, the movie deserves a close look, especially from fans of kindred spirit Jeff Nichols, whose “Take Shelter” and “Midnight Special” operate in some of the same thematic territory as “Fast Color.” A series based on the film is currently being developed for Amazon.

Despite the frequently-appended superhero tag, the movie, which Hart co-wrote with spouse and “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz, is not a cape-and-tights adventure. Instead, it shares similarities with other realistically-grounded “what if?” stories like “Chronicle” and “Brightburn,” exploring a world in which people with supernatural abilities attempt to cope with the ramifications of their often terrifying powers. But “Fast Color” is also a heartfelt family saga, a melodrama about mothers and daughters, and an essay on race, class and the environmental state of the planet.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Ruth, a young woman on the run from federal authorities and scientists who seek to contain and study — and possibly harness — her extraordinary but frighteningly hard-to-control resources. Afraid of her own strength, Ruth secures herself with rope to minimize the impact of frequent seizures that manifest as earthquakes. Hart carefully parcels out information to the curious viewer. Are these miraculous capacities somehow linked to the crippling, 8-year-long drought that has disrupted life as we currently know it? Soon, Ruth will make her way home to her mother Bo (Lorraine Toussaint) and her daughter Lila (Saniyya Sidney).

The dystopian milieu is less convincingly communicated than the sticky family ties. The scarcity of fresh water, with echoes of  everything from “Chinatown” to “Tank Girl,” has propelled many tales of present and future nightmares. Hart uses this element to set up a key moment of high drama as well as to comment on the fragility that accompanies real-life food insecurity. The breadth of the X-Men-esque command of physical objects is visually striking, and Hart alludes to “The Day the Earth Stood Still” in a smooth homage. The computer-generated effects — as promised by the title — are imaginative, inventive and chromatically dazzling.

Cast members bring warmth and empathy to their roles. David Strathairn is a welcome presence in a key supporting part. Christopher Denham, playing a researcher pursuing Ruth, starts stronger than he finishes, but that is a function of the script’s agenda more than any fault of the actor. The modest production budget turns out to be a real asset, as the rural settings (the film was shot in New Mexico) ground the action in dusty, recognizable reality. X-Ray Spex lovers will appreciate the prominent use of the title track from the legendary punk landmark “Germfree Adolescents.” That song and Nina Simone’s “New World Coming” resonate with feminist affirmation and Black pride, and the lyrics to both adroitly comment on the unfolding story.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Admirers of previous television and film incarnations of Charles Addams’ legendary collection of macabre icons have another variation to contemplate, but the computer-animated feature from “Sausage Party” directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan fails to measure up to either the 1960s ABC series or the pair of Barry Sonnenfeld-directed features released in the early 1990s. Certainly, the new movie could be much worse, but very little of Addams’ brilliant satire is on display. The most devoted fans will appreciate the authenticity of the character design, which sticks closely to the look of the classic illustrations. The Nitrogen Studios tech, however, is a far cry from state-of-the-art Pixar, and the too-cheerful palette never properly evokes the monochromatic washes of Addams’ single-panel masterworks.

A prologue origin story takes the viewer from the old country wedding of Gomez (Oscar Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) to the New Jersey mansion — here a derelict hospital for the criminally insane — where the couple decides to settle down and raise a family. The imposing keep overlooks planned community Assimilation, a suburban collection of model homes built by HGTV-style cable host Margeaux Needler (Allison Janney). It is unclear why Needler never noticed the hulking structure before she decided to invest in real estate, and the filmmakers use her as a shrill and unpleasant antagonist in a toothless variation on the classic “the Addams encounter a square” plotline that inevitably points to a timely lesson about the value of tolerance in a xenophobic society.

One of the movie’s primary threads treats the bar mitzvah-like rite of passage identified as the “Sabre Mazurka,” an anxiety-producing test for son Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard). To the shock and horror of many townspeople, a small army of Addams clan members descends on the vanilla development to witness Pugsley’s special day, and the script uses the occasion to queue up the arrival of It, performed by Snoop Dogg in a slight spin on the character’s traditionally modulated gibberish. Using the simplified spelling introduced in the 1991 feature instead of the traditional “Cousin Itt,” the filmmakers mostly ignore the popular figure once he has emerged from his custom lowrider. The participation of Snoop, who also contributes to the track “My Family” along with Migos and Karol G, evokes the kitsch factor of the MC Hammer crossover “Addams Groove.” I hope that some enterprising scholar is at work on a thesis deconstructing the relationship of hip-hop to the Addams Family.

Unsurprisingly, the misadventures of the Chloe Grace Moretz-voiced Wednesday provide the movie’s most promising ideas, even if they don’t stick the landing. As full of woe as Christina Ricci’s incarnation, our morose heroine infiltrates the local junior high school in a kind of sociological experiment to observe the curiosities of the “normal” citizens and mean girls down the hill. Wednesday’s behavior worries Morticia, and the matriarch’s subsequent distress suggests that the mother-daughter relationship will be comprehensively addressed. It isn’t. The movie misses yet another golden opportunity when Wednesday befriends Needler’s daughter Parker (Elsie Fisher, stuck with dialogue a long way from “Eighth Grade”). Even when the two are briefly locked in a room together, the film can’t be bothered to give them the kind of revealing heart-to-heart that would add some much-needed depth and dimension.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Birmingham, Alabama-set “Sword of Trust” is filmmaker Lynn Shelton’s first feature to be located outside the Pacific Northwest, and the change of scenery results in what might be the writer-director’s most satisfying movie to date. Sharing screenplay credit with “Saturday Night Live” writing veteran Mike O’Brien, Shelton continues to encourage the improvisational work of her cast members. That approach can often backfire, but the impressive skills of the ensemble turn the droll tale of a curious Civil War-era artifact into a comic showcase for principals Jillian Bell (having a career-best year), Marc Maron, Michaela Watkins, and Jon Bass.

Maron’s Mel is the proprietor of a pawn shop staffed by himself and dim-bulb, web-surfing underling Nathaniel (Bass). They meet Mary (Watkins) and Cynthia (Bell) when the two women offer for sale an antique military cutlass that soon comes to be known as a “prover item” — a relic that fuels revisionist fantasies in which the Confederacy defeated the Union in the “War of Northern Aggression.” How do modern-day rebels account for all the history written in books and the realities of day-to-day existence? Conspiracy theories giving credence to hidden powers in a clandestine, deep state government, of course. Nathaniel only needs a few minutes on the internet to find a buyer willing to pay a handsome fee for the sword.

Shelton convincingly alternates between the absurd misadventures of the core quartet and the well-observed moments of confessional pathos during which the audience sees the characters as humans doing their best to get along in the world (and maybe capture a little happiness along the way). The director plays Mel’s ex-girlfriend Deirdre, and a fleeting interaction between the two sets up a poignant monologue that takes place in the back of a van, when Mel describes his past struggles with addiction. The heartfelt humanity of bits like that one, as well as equally intimate information shared by Mary and Cynthia, adds a welcome layer of depth to the otherwise ridiculous journey.

Along with the four main personalities, Shelton uses her supporting players to wonderful advantage. Dan Bakkedahl makes off with his scenes as the initially frightening leader of the organization promoting the cockamamie beliefs of Old South victory and superiority. Just as fun is Toby Huss as the aptly named Hog Jaws, the emissary dispatched as the go-between during the convoluted transaction. Along with Zeke and Jake (Timothy Paul and Whitmer Thomas), another dopey duo of treasure hunters eager to acquire the blade, Shelton smartly mines the subtext to reflect the partisan fractures in the contemporary American electorate.

The routinely hilarious wordplay keeps viewers smiling, but “Sword of Trust” paints a picture of the troubling political undercurrents in the state of our Donald Trump-era (dis)union. None of the good ol’ boys caught up in the fanciful onscreen truther nonsense sport red “Make America Great Again” ballcaps, but Shelton not-so-subtly codes these folks as, at best, misguided red-state morons. At their worst, the potentially violent fanatics imply support for the kind of white-supremacy and nationalism encouraged by Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” claim following the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A carefully crafted and intensely observant fictionalization of writer-director Joanna Hogg’s experiences once upon a time in film school in the early 1980s, “The Souvenir” is essential viewing for devoted cinephiles. Semi-autobiography may be an appropriate descriptor for the movie, but “The Souvenir,” which collected the World Cinema Dramatic Prize at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, should not be confined to a lone category like memoir. Hogg’s wide embrace folds around the frequently considered ideas of the artist’s journey, but “The Souvenir” also explores the emotional maturation of a young woman in a difficult romantic relationship with a high-functioning addict. 

Hogg’s onscreen proxy Julie is portrayed by Honor Swinton Byrne in her first featured role — and it’s a memorable, breakout performance. Julie’s affluence, privilege, and comfort is represented in several ways but principally communicated in brief scenes in which she taps her mother Rosalind (Tilda Swinton, real life mom of Swinton Byrne and a longtime friend of the director) for cash infusions that more often than not fund older boyfriend Anthony’s (Tom Burke) habits as much as the movie gear, film stock, and other school-related expenses Julie needs to pursue her evolving moviemaking vision. 

Hogg appreciates subtlety, and one of the great joys of “The Souvenir” is the way in which the viewer is invited to participate in the small intimacies experienced by Julie. The result is that we feel our way through the narrative alongside the protagonist, discovering the good and the not so good in concert with her. This technique of hiding all kinds of valuable information in plain sight — but just a bit left of center or in the background — can feel like the most empowering kind of storytelling for those comfortable with the nuance and ambiguity of an open-ended text.

The restraint with which Hogg conducts the proceedings may turn off viewers accustomed to the blunt, direct streamlining of plot beats in most films, but there’s no denying that the director’s orientation toward the discovery of transcendent moments within the quotidian aligns with Robert Bresson’s respect for quietude, stillness, and introspection. That said, “The Souvenir” breathes and behaves cinematically. It is far from just pictures of people talking. The spaces between the dialogue, when the violence of political strife or the attitudes of professors and fellow students may be inferred, draw us in.  

As a particular kind of bildungsroman, “The Souvenir” is also supremely sensual. Hogg’s stylish sojourn to Venice is tactile in its eroticism, even as we know the toxic mismatch of Julie and Anthony will inevitably lead to one heartbreak or another. The filmmaker dramatizes concrete components of the heroine’s progress, especially when they come with a steep cost, and the result is that we stretch and grow along with Julie. Additionally, Hogg shot in sequence, with much improvisation, including but not limited to work on a carefully constructed apartment set. Cinematographer David Raedecker captured images on digital and motion picture stocks to get specific textures and grain. Admirers of “The Souvenir” may continue their celebrations. A sequel is currently in production. 

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Arthouse sensibilities converge with a major star (having a major year) and elite visual effects in James Gray’s “Ad Astra,” a movie poised to earn the filmmaker his best notices to date in a career spanning 25 years. Set in a near future where space travel to outposts on the moon and Mars functions with the charmless tedium of our contemporary airlines, astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is tapped to participate in a curious mission: reach out with a message to his previously presumed-dead dad H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones). A legendary pioneer of space exploration and the leader of the extraterrestrial/intelligent life-seeking Lima Project, Clifford is now a prime suspect in a series of mysterious and devastating energy surges.

Roy, whose thoughts we often hear in voiceover, undertakes a harrowing journey of some 2.7 billion miles, experiencing along the way challenges both physical and mental. Gray successfully engages in some creative world-building, and one of the most rewarding aspects of “Ad Astra” is the confident manner in which the filmmaker alternates between Roy’s intimate, introspective headspace and the intensity of turning-point encounters of action. Several of the latter, including an imaginative lunar surface buggy chase and a confrontation with a pair of research animals, worm into the viewer’s brain, unlikely to fade anytime soon.

Regardless of the extent to which one is smitten with the religious allegory and father-son thematic, “Ad Astra” looks absolutely gorgeous. Courtesy of master cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s eye and commitment to creative problem-solving, the movie boasts a lengthy list of stunning visual choices. Primarily originated on motion picture film, “Ad Astra” approaches its otherworldliness via practical and realistic decision-making. In a variety of situations, Van Hoytema deploys everything from slightly higher shooting speeds of 32 to 36 frames per second to a dual rig containing one infrared and one 35mm camera to custom-built, coating-free lenses.

For all the wizardry, however, Gray keeps us close to the turmoil and anxiety experienced by Roy. Pitt, in what might be a career-best performance, could find himself on the Academy’s list of Best Actor nominees for the movies of 2019. The actor does expert work opposite a series of worthy scene partners that includes Donald Sutherland, Ruth Negga, and Jones, but his finest scenes in the film unfold when he isolated and alone. Whether at the controls of a craft, answering psychological evaluation questions, or reflecting with no small amount of regret on personal failures and disappointments, Roy’s calm exterior conceals the emotions men are required by society to keep hidden.

Even though the broad strokes of Gray’s screenplay, co-written with Ethan Gross, suggest a variation on the quest for a rogue, Kurtz-like “emissary of pity, and science, and progress” as imagined in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” Gray’s film — like all serious-minded science fiction cinema that blends existential philosophy with feats of technical effects photography — invites comparison to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” While the 1968 masterwork remains the gold standard, the evolution of the art form has sparked a renaissance of eye and brain candy. “Ad Astra” joins the likes of “Gravity” and “Interstellar” — photographed, respectively, by Emmanuel Lubezki and van Hoytema — as one of Kubrick’s starchildren.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Based on “The Hustlers at Scores,” Jessica Pressler’s 2015 “New York Magazine” article, Lorene Scafaria’s “Hustlers” dives headfirst into the world of sex work through the eyes of the women who make a living at it. Shaping her narrative around the complexities of female friendship and the pressures wrought by the financial crisis of 2008, Scafaria — who also wrote the screenplay — convincingly paints a psychologically resonant portrait that allows the viewer a seat on the inside looking out, as opposed to the more common depictions of movie stripping as framed by and for the pleasure of heterosexual males. 

While the movie’s trailer and one-sheet suggest a deep-bench ensemble that includes pop hyphenates Lizzo and Cardi B, Scafaria focuses primarily on the dynamic between Constance Wu’s struggling single mom Dorothy/Destiny and Jennifer Lopez’s seasoned mama bear pole-veteran Ramona Vega. The colors of that relationship provide the highs and lows of the movie’s emotional landscape; Ramona’s calculating business acumen often gets in the way of Dorothy’s moral compass once the gears start turning. In this capacity, the point-of-view ultimately resides with Dorothy on her journey from neophyte to master in control (of herself if not her circumstances).  

A Scorsese-esque pair of sequences tracking Dorothy first through the labyrinth of a neon-lit, booze-soaked club and later as she rushes past judgemental mothers to drop her daughter at school indicate Scafaria’s directorial flair. At times, “Hustlers” embraces the music video mythology of prurient gaze-invitation — an amusing cameo by Usher as his 2008 self sets up a bump-and-grind, slow-motion, make-it-rain tableau while “Love in This Club” underscores the action. But the men in the movie are always a means to an end, a collective prop representing first a kind of gross entitlement and then later an all-too-easy mark, ready to be separated from significant amounts of cash. 

The key soundtrack cues, selected and placed for maximum impact by the director, represent another point of comparison with Scorsese, who has long been a master of matching the perfect song to the right moment. Scafaria’s pair of classic Janet Jackson cuts, “Control” and “Miss You Much,” function as thematic bookends. Fiona Apple’s “Criminal,” which has become something of a stripping staple, introduces us to a commanding Ramona. Perhaps the most Scorsese-like sequence, which evokes the “Layla (Piano Exit)” body montage in “Goodfellas,” is a tour de force reckoning backed by Lorde’s “Royals.”

The con-artistry that precedes that moment places “Hustlers” in the company of other movies that have examined facets of the economic crash of 2008, most obviously “The Big Short,” as Adam McKay is one of the producers of Scafaria’s film. But the particulars of “Hustlers,” especially in terms of the movie’s commitment to working women telling the story and working women being the story, distinguishes it from the others. A framing device utilizing Julia Stiles’ journalist as interlocutor, confessor, interrogator, and listener not only provides Scafaria with the means to organize chronological jumps in the timeline, it serves as a reflection and reminder of Scafaria’s own presence as moviemaker.