Movies

Sometimes real historical figures are so grand and eccentric that, like the rare and special occurrence of a solar eclipse, it seems that one can only view them through a pinhole, their light too bright to fully take in. Such is the case in the biopic “Dalíland,” directed by Mary Harron, written by her husband John C. Walsh, which is not much more than a peek at the life of the legendary Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí (Ben Kingsley) and his equally ostentatious wife, muse and manager, Gala (Barbara Sukowa).

Late in “Past Lives,” there’s a scene in which two people walk down a street and silently wait for an Uber, captured in a single shot. Like the film itself, it is a deceptively simple moment, a seemingly mundane interaction that is simmering with tension and fraught with meaning, the ticking clock of the car’s imminent arrival pulling the narrative taut. It’s a deft and daring choice from filmmaker Celine Song, especially since she just lets the audience take this in, secure in the knowledge that our attentive patience has been carefully earned over the course of “Past Lives,” a film that is at once about two minutes, a day, a year, 12 years, a lifetime and many lifetimes.

There's good news and bad news about "The Boogeyman," the scary new movie based on a short story by Stephen King about - well, the title says it all. First the good news: You will sit on the edge of your seat for much of this movie, and jump out of your skin periodically, especially if you can still remember being afraid to go to sleep because of the monster that lived in the closet, the thing under the bed, the shadow cast on the wall by the Yeti-like hominid lurking just outside your bedroom window, plucking leaves off a tree and eating them.

Say this much for "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse": It's a lot of movie. When "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" opened in 2018, it felt like a bolt of something genuinely new, its dazzling animation breathing new life into a mini Marvel franchise that was verging on exhaustion and its protagonist, a Brooklyn teenager named Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore) taking suave ownership of the iconic title character for a new generation.

Some kids hope to become professional athletes. Some dream of being rock stars. Carlos “Sparxz” Carabello wished he could become a dinosaur. Fat chance, since dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years, right?

Admirers of the beloved 1989 animated classic “The Little Mermaid” are justified to approach the new live-action adaptation with trepidation. As Disney has systematically raided its archive for intellectual property to repurpose (and, more to the point, remonetize), the results have been wildly uneven: For every better-than-expected “Jungle Book” and “Cinderella,” audiences have been subjected to far more misfires on the order of “Aladdin.”

Comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco (recently seen in Ray Romano’s directorial debut, the family-themed dramedy “Somewhere in Queens,” as the brother of Romano’s character) has referred to the subject of his own Sicilian-immigrant father as a “gold mine” for his stand-up act, which can be pretty funny. With Maniscalco’s feature writing debut – the genial family comedy “About My Father” – the performer returns to that mother lode, playing a version of himself, also named Sebastian Maniscalco, with Robert De Niro as his Sicilian-immigrant father, Salvo.

Early on in “You Hurt My Feelings,” a therapist named Don (Tobias Menzies) is wrapping up a Zoom session with a client. After noting that they’re making real progress, Don starts to log off, before hearing his patient mutter, “God, what an idiot.”

If you want to see a good movie about a warrior stranded in hostile territory in Afghanistan who's trying to get himself and his Afghan interpreter to safety in Kandahar without getting killed, I'd recommend "Guy Ritchie's The Covenant," now available on Apple TV Plus, Google Play, Prime Video, YouTube and other platforms. A departure for the director of such violent, gleefully vulgar action-comedies as "Snatch" and "The Gentlemen," Ritchie's latest film, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim, is a moving testament to our obligation to the Afghan civilians who helped the U.S. military while we were there, many of whom were left behind only to go into hiding or be killed.

'R.M.N.': Fear and bias in a Romanian village

LOS ANGELES — Universal Pictures’ “Fast X” raced to the top of the box office this weekend, launching at $67.5 million domestically, according to studio estimates. 

Much has been written about Halle Bailey's siren-like vocals as Ariel in Disney's live-action remake of "The Little Mermaid," but it shouldn't drown out McCarthy's splashy showing in the upcoming film.

For offbeat films, try the Criterion Collection

With his latest film, “Master Gardener,” writer/director Paul Schrader closes out an epic trilogy exploring modern masculinity and existential dread. Written with Schrader’s prickly, challenging point of view, and crafted with arch expertise, the “man in a room” trilogy, made up of “First Reformed,” “The Card Counter” and now “Master Gardener,” is unflinchingly bleak and often angry. But in his finale, the auteur reveals himself to be a deeply swooning romantic underneath all the violent stoicism of his protagonists, allowing his hope for redemption to fully bloom.

In the last exciting installment of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, 2021’s “Fast 9,” the gang drove a car into space, tangled with a long-lost brother and pushed the physical limits of various vintage Dodge Chargers in far-flung locations around the globe, as Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is wont to do. Since then, there have been a few external shake-ups in the "Fast" world: longtime ...

Several times during “Monica,” the title character rages against absent people or at herself. These episodes don’t, however, foreshadow an emotional blowout between the drama’s central figures: Monica, a transgender woman, and her mother Eugenia, who disowned her years before. Aside from those few excited moments, the film is deliberate, shadowed and whispery. Rather than struggle to a breakdown or breakthrough, mother and child tiptoe to acceptance.

The roads and rods remain hot in 'Fast X'