Film Reviews by Amy

Parallel Mothers (R)

Parallel Mothers (R)

Writer and director Pedro Almodóvar tells a story of mothers and daughters, secrets and reckoning with the past in the Spanish-language movie Parallel Mothers.

I mean, OK, he does that in most of the movies of his that I’ve seen — Pain and Glory felt like a striking departure because it was about a mother and son — but Almodóvar knows how to build fascinating relationships between imperfect women.

Here we see Janis (Penélope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit), sharing a hospital room, as they are about to give birth to their babies. Both are single. Janis is a settled professional woman nearing 40; Ana is a teenager (how old exactly I’m not sure — high school or young college). Janis is grateful for this unexpected pregnancy, the result of an enjoyable (but concluded, maybe) affair. Even before we hear the details, it’s clear that there is some trauma attached to Ana’s pregnancy. Both women have their babies — Janis’ daughter Cecilia and Ana’s daughter Anita — and both have some emotional support in their corner: Janis has her longtime friend Elena (Rossy de Palma) and Ana has Teresa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), the mother with whom she’s had a difficult relationship. At least, Ana has her mother’s financial support; a stage actress, Teresa lands a career-defining role and has to go on tour early in Ana’s new mom-hood.

Janis is managing with help from her housekeeper and, eventually, a good daycare, thanks to some photography work thrown her way by Elena. But she hits an unexpected emotional bump when Arturo (Israel Elejalde), baby Cecilia’s father, comes to see them. Though she ended their relationship — he’s married and wasn’t too keen on her keeping the baby — she is disappointed when he leaves moments after seeing Cecilia. Later he tells her he didn’t feel a kind of instant recognition for the baby, which sets Janis’ mind going in all sorts of directions, perhaps connected to the fact that she didn’t know her own father and was raised by her grandmother.

While Janis and Ana deal with their present-day motherhood, a story unfolds in the background connected to how Janis and Arturo first met. Arturo is an archaeologist whose work includes looking into the remains of those executed during the Spanish Civil War. Janis and the village she is from are looking to get help excavating an unmarked grave that they believe holds 10 men, including Janis’ great-grandfather. When Janis works a photo shoot for Arturo, she asks him if he will help the village work on the excavations — with the great-grandchildren and grandchildren and even at least one living child of the men eager to see them properly laid to rest.

It’s odd to have a melodramatic — to the point of soapiness — tale of Janis and Arturo and Ana layered over the top of this more searing historical tale of wrongs and the attempts to bring some sort of justice or at least recognition of what happened. There is a clear throughline — about having to acknowledge wrongs, despite the personal sacrifices, and make attempts to make amends. But it’s still jarring, at times.

That said, this is, as always, a well-crafted, thoroughly engrossing tale of women and their relationships to each other, of mothers and their difficult (but fiercely loving) relationships with their daughters, of coming to terms with sorrow and heartache and moving forward. Almodóvar does such a great job of getting to the raw emotion of these tangles — and of getting an emotionally raw performance from Cruz — that it overcomes what occasionally feel like dips into “too much”-ness, storywise. B+

Rated R for some sexuality, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, Parallel Mothers is two hours and three minutes long and distributed by Sony in theaters.

Featured photo: Parellel Mothers.

Brazen (TV-14)

Brazen (TV-14)

Alyssa Milano is a mystery writer who must solve her sister’s real-world murder in Brazen, a relaxing mug of “Lifetime thriller plus TV procedural” from Netflix.

Grace Miller (Milano) is a rich and famous mystery writer who rushes home when her sister Kathleen (Emilie Ullerop) calls her saying she needs help. What she needs is for Grace to allow her to mortgage her half of the family home the girls own together (and where Kathleen currently lives) so that Kathleen can hire a lawyer to fight for custody of her young son. Kathleen had to leave him with her estranged husband when she went to get treatment for her substance misuse issues but is now sober, working as a high school teacher and ready to fight for her son.

Even teaching at a fancy private school and money from a mortgage won’t be enough to afford the lawyer she’ll need to fight her rich and powerful ex, which is why Kathleen also has a side gig as a webcam performer. In a hidden room behind her closet, she performs as a dominatrix named “Desiree.” Desiree has a flowing brunette wig (Kathleen is a blonde) and wears a partial face mask (a sort of sparkly lace thing, not, like, an N95) so it’s clear Kathleen is hoping this part-time job stays a secret. But of course somebody is able to hack in and learns the real identity and location of Kathleen.

When Grace goes on a date with Kathleen’s neighbor, handsomely scruffy-beard-having police detective Ed (Sam Page — much improved from when he was Joan’s awful husband on Mad Men), Kathleen is home alone, doing one quick performance as Desiree. When Grace returns, she finds Kathleen dead on the floor of her bedroom.

As the first person on the crime scene, Ed, along with his partner Ben (Malachi Weir), gets assigned the case — which feels like one of those standard “but isn’t this some kind of conflict of interest thing, especially since you’re letting the victim’s sister crash on your couch, Detective Ed” TV conceits that you just gotta go with if you’re going to commit to watching an Alyssa Milano made-for-streaming thriller. Ed wants Grace to stay safe and out of the way while he and Ben do their investigating, but Grace, with her “knack for getting in killer’s heads” or something that has helped her solve real-world crimes as she does research for her books, convinces their boss, Captain Rivera (Alison Araya), to let her join in the investigation. And if you’re thinking “wait, the police are letting some fiction writer who is also a family member of the victim be part of the official investigation?” then maybe you didn’t see the “an Alyssa Milano made-for-streaming thriller” part earlier.

Brazen isn’t an especially good movie but it is a good watch. It is basically doing a Castle, with a little Law & Order-universe and just a touch of The Closer. It has that same easy-drinking quality of a story that can keep you watching without being so taxing you have to pay super close attention. It has the standard red herrings, no-nonsense police lady boss and partner banter. (Weir’s Ben and Araya’s police captain are perfectly serviceable supporting characters.) And because there is also some romance business here, Grace and Ed have an extremely from-the-shoulders-up love scene that was kinda charming for its lack of heat or chemistry. (What they lack in romantic chemistry, though, Milano and Page adequately make up for in mystery-partner chemistry.) It’s like “yes, we know we have to have this scene but let’s get you back to the mystery as soon as possible.”

Look, I’d like to pretend that I want to relax in the evening with a good book — a literary novel that’s been nominated for an important prize or perhaps a weighty and important history. But if I happen upon a Bones or Major Crimes or heck even a CSI in a pinch while flipping mindlessly through live TV, I’m probably going to stop there and fancy myself clever for figuring out whodunit. Brazen is that exactly — in fact, in a different era, it could have been the two-part premiere to some Wednesday-night network series. A Wednesday-night network series that would win no awards but that I would happily watch, both in first run and in syndication. B-

Rated TV-14. Directed by Monika Mitchell with a screenplay by Edithe Swensen and Donald Martin and Suzette Couture (based on the Nora Roberts novel Brazen Virtue), Brazen is an hour and 34 minutes long and available on Netflix.

Featured photo: Brazen.

Scream (R)

Scream (R)

Another girl, another ghostface but same old Woodsboro in Scream, the fifth movie in the Scream series, which started way back in the prehistoric days of 1996.

That movie was also called Scream. This Scream, hewing to its meta roots, explains how franchise continuations these days can’t just reboot from zero and they can just be straight sequels, making this a “requel” combo of new blood and legacy characters.

Sure, kids, let’s.

Another Woodsboro high schooler, Tara (Jenna Ortega), answers a landline expecting an acquaintance and instead getting chatted up by an unfamiliar voice about scary movies. Unlike Drew Barrymore during the Clinton administration, Tara isn’t killed, just horribly horribly injured. Her estranged older sister, Sam (Melissa Barrera), returns to Woodsboro to tend to her — with boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid) in tow. Sam explains to Richie that her town has a history with slashers, how every few years some killer puts on a ghostface mask and reenacts the murders of the friends of then-teen Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell), crimes that eventually fed the popular Stab movie series. What she doesn’t tell him right away is that she has a connection to that original spate of murders and she’s afraid that that connection is why her sister was targeted.

When more people are killed, Sam turns to an expert — Dewey Riley (David Arquette). No longer a sheriff and divorced from wife Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), Dewey is reluctant to get involved but, of course, he is eventually drawn in. Naturally, Tara has a friend group and it is through them that we learn the rules of the requel and how Stab (and Scream) is a conscious back-to-basics approach to horror in a world where elevated horror-as-social-commentary entries are getting more of the spotlight.

These are all cute ideas and the movie executes them totally OK-ish-ly. The first Scream made its mark with not just its humor but the way it messed around with the rules of classic horror while also following those rules. There is some of that here, some messing around with our expectations and what a “requel” needs to be, but I feel like there was one extra turn, one extra bit of off-kilter-ness needed to make this pop. When it comes to the legacy characters, the movie makes good use of about half of them. I like the character of Sydney as presented here but the movie seems to run out of things for her to do. Cox’s Gale doesn’t have much to do from the start and really seems like she was inserted just to bring in those streaming-era Friends binge-ers.

Likewise, the new blood, as I’m pretty sure the movie itself calls them, are spunky modern-horror teens similar to the kids from those Netflix horror movies from last fall. Their pre-loaded self-awareness, though, makes their discussions about “who is the killer” and “who is the main character” feel less like a bit of meta cleverness and more like just how these very online kids talk. It is all fine but it did not particularly tickle me with its wit. Barrera, whom I have most recently seen before this in In the Heights, is a good lead, perfectly able to do both the scream queen stuff and the “girl fights back” bits.

This movie is perfectly accessible to fans of the original Scream movies and moviegoers too young to remember them. It goes down smooth, even if it isn’t particularly complex or inventive and doesn’t leave you wanting even a little bit more. C+

Rated R for strong bloody violence, language throughout and some sexual references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett with a screenplay by James Vanderbilt & Guy Busick (based on characters by Kevin Williamson), Scream is an hour and 54 minutes long and distributed by Paramount Pictures in theaters.

Featured photo: Scream.

The 355 (PG-13)

The 355 (PG-13)

A group of bad-ass international spy-type ladies kick some international bad-guy butt in the big bucket of movie theater popcorn that is The 355 — or, at least, that’s the movie I wanted to see.

In actuality, while that description basically holds, The 355 is something less than that. These are all awesome actresses, all in their 40s no less, who all get a chance to kick and punch and throw elbows, taking down countless henchmen. They get to be tough, walk tough, dress tough — and dress fancy during one part of their mission. And yet the movie never revs up. Every time the movie is about to get going, it feels like the energy just dissipates.

CIA agent Mace (Jessica Chastain) and fellow agent (and longtime friend) Nick (Sebastian Stan) are tasked with going to Paris to meet with a rogue Colombian intelligence agent, Luis (Edgar Ramirez), who is looking to sell a tech gizmo that allows anyone (or any government or any terrorist organization) that possesses it unfettered access to any closed system in the world. The drive can down planes, black out cities, unleash nukes, yada yada — you’ve seen variations of this McGuffin before.

Naturally, the CIA isn’t the only interested party. While Mace and Nick pose as a honeymooning couple at a cafe, German intelligence officer Marie (Diane Kruger) is making espressos and waiting for her chance to grab the bag that has the drive. When she does, chaos ensues. Mace chases Marie but doesn’t get her before she’s able to get away — not, Marie is disappointed to learn, with the drive. Nick meets up with a group of baddies seeking the drive and soon Mace finds herself alone and under suspicion. Needing help to track down Luis, she turns to MI6 agent Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o). When they catch up with Luis, they find that not only is Marie still on his trail, but he’s been joined by Graciela (Penelope Cruz), a psychiatrist who works with Colombian intelligence who has been sent to bring Luis back in.

Eventually Graciela, Khadijah, Marie and Mace decide to work together to fight off the bad guys and get the potentially civilization-toppling drive into safe hands. That goal, they learn, is shared by Chinese intelligence agent Lin Mi Sheng (Fan Bingbing).

As I said, all of these actresses are in their 40s (which I mention because it’s just cool to see) and all are credible as strong women with special evil-defeating skills. This should work; I should have run home from the theater having had so much fun that I immediately attempted to pre-order the movie for regular comfort food watching. But this movie lacks the kind of energy, the crackle of fun, that you expect from something with this much potential. Its runtime is just over two hours which feels like too long for what it’s doing, made even draggier by some pokey pacing and some real “who cares” backstories. (There is also something odd about many of Fan Bingbing’s scenes; I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether she had been green-screened in after the fact. If nothing else, it probably goes to how pasted together the story felt when it comes to putting all the lady spies together.)

That you could guess every single twist and turn is not fatal — I was expecting The 355 to be kinda dumb. Heck, I was looking forward to enjoying a kinda dumb action movie with ladies Jason-Bourne-ing it up. But this movie doesn’t let its formidable cast loose and doesn’t have the internal cleverness to be as smart or as goofy as it needed to be. C+

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, brief strong language and suggestive material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Simon Kinberg with a screenplay by Theresa Rebeck and Simon Kinberg, The 355 is two hours and two minutes long and is distributed by Universal Studios in theaters.

Licorice Pizza (R)

A 15-year-old living in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1970s has big dreams — one of which is marrying the 25-year-old photographer’s assistant he meets on school picture day — in Licorice Pizza, which is written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of frequent Anderson actor the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) has some movie and TV credits on his resume and, despite not yet driving, runs a PR firm with his mother (Mary Elizabeth Ellis). I’m not telling you this to brag, he says to Alana (Alana Haim, of the band Haim), when he first meets her as she’s offering combs and a mirror to high schoolers lining up to get their photos taken. He explains he’s just telling her how he can afford dinner at Tail o’ the Cock, the steakhouse that is his usual Thursday night hangout spot (he does PR for the owner). He invites her to stop by — and Alana both laughs at his chutzpah and is intrigued.

She does stop by, they hang out and she gives him her number — but reminds him that they aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, that such a relationship would be illegal, that he’s just a kid. And yet, she continues to hang out with him. When Gary’s chance encounter with a discount waterbed has him suddenly enter the waterbed business, Alana joins him as his business partner, helping him sell them over the phone and even driving the truck to install one. Later, as she tries to break free of his strange teenage friend group by volunteering for a political campaign, she nevertheless calls on Gary to shoot an ad for the candidate. And that shoot is where he gets the idea to start a pinball parlor — Gary is always on the make, always looking for his next thing. And, he seems perfectly content to look for new girlfriends, even while never letting go of the idea that Alana is the girl he’s going to marry.

Presumably, when he graduates from high school.

Throughout this strange, rambling hang in Encino, we meet real and fictionalized versions of L.A. personalities and showbiz people, from fellow younger actors (played by Skyler Gisondo) and to older stars (played by Christine Ebersole, Sean Penn) to more general Hollywood types (played by Bradley Cooper, Maya Rudolph).

In a movie full of great, fun performances, Cooper Hoffman (18 in real life) and Alana Haim stand out for turning in the loose, natural performances you come to an artier movie hoping for. Even before I realized who Hoffman’s father was, I found myself thinking “this kid has some real Michael Gandolfini energy” — something about him makes you think both of the discipline of the father as well as the rawness of a young actor’s performance.

Haim is equally precisely cast. It feels like a cop-out to just describe her as natural — her sisters here are played by her real-life sisters, her parents are played by her actual parents. But she gives such a round and real performance. Perhaps the highest compliment I could pay is that she feels like a girl in a Sofia Coppola movie, one who feels like a whole complete person, still figuring herself out but living a whole life from the first frame.

I could never completely forget that this movie was asking me to be all “aw, youth” about a (thankfully, fairly chaste) relationship between a 25 (at least) -year-old and a 15-year-old, no matter how precocious he is. You don’t have to think about it (or the gender politics of the situation) too hard for it to all feel icky.

So there’s that.

But then there was the other part of this movie, the one about rotary phones and newspapers the size of tablecloths and Pontiacs and those steakhouse-as-Tudor-pub restaurants (that vaguely call to mind the old style of Pizza Hut) and 1970s-era radio and aging Golden Age of Hollywood stars and a land where everybody is sort of an actor and the look of the warm sun of inland Los Angeles. My feelings about that aspect of the movie aren’t nostalgia, exactly; this all predates me. But Licorice Pizza puts you in a very specific space, and weaves its groovy-man fairy tale in such a way that I felt not just pulled in but charmed by the spirit of it. It made me think about all the times I’ve seen 1950s suburbia or 1950s Brooklyn presented with that same comforting glow of consequence-free misadventures and coming-of-age bravado. Fairy tale feels like the right way to describe all of this, a fairy tale of 1970s southern California.

With a really great soundtrack. A-

Rated R for language, sexual material and some drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza is two hours and 13 minutes long and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures in theaters.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Dr., Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Dr., Manchester, anselm.edu

Fathom Events
Fathomevents.com

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• Licorice Pizza (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Thursday, Jan. 13, at 3:30 & 7 p.m.; Friday, Jan. 14, through Sunday, Jan. 16, at 12:30, 3:45 & 7 p.m.; Thursday, Jan. 20, at 3:45 & 7 p.m.

• The Tragedy of Macbeth (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Thursday, Jan. 13, at 4 & 7:30 p.m.; Friday, Jan. 14, through Sunday, Jan. 16, at noon & 5 p.m.; Thursday, Jan. 20, at 5 p.m.

• C’mon C’mon (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Jan. 14, through Sunday, Jan. 16, at 2:30 & 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, Jan. 20, at 7:30 p.m.

• Nanook of the North (1922), a silent documentary with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, Jan. 23, at 2 p.m. at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre. Suggested donation of $10.

• For Heaven’s Sake (1926), a silent film starring Harold Lloyd with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Wednesday, Jan. 26, at 6 p.m. at the Flying Monkey. Suggested donation of $10.

• Dark Mountain (2021) on Wednesday, Feb. 2, at 7 p.m. at the Flying Monkey. Tickets cost $12.

• Blood and Sand (1922), on Sunday, Feb. 13, at 2 p.m. at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre. Suggested donation of $10.

Featured photo: The 355..

Nightmare Alley (R)

Nightmare Alley (R)

Step right up and enjoy the thrills, chills and stylish miasma of dread concocted by director and co-writer Guillermo del Toro in Nightmare Alley.

It’s 1939 when we first see Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper). He’s dragging a body into a hole in the floor of a dilapidated house and then lighting the house on fire. Walking away from the flames, he eventually boards a bus and rides until the end of the line, which happens to be very near to a low-budget carnival. He wanders around, ducking out of the geek show (man eats live chicken) before Clem (Willem Dafoe) can collect the 25-cent admission. Carnival boss Bruno (Ron Perlman) catches him but takes pity on him, offering the nearly wordless Stan a job helping to break down the sets and tents and haul the carnival to the next town. Stan does alright with the job, and they keep him around. At first he helps out Clem but later he worms his way into the act of Zeena (Toni Collette), who does mystical readings and psychic-type work. She and her partner Pete (David Strathain) used to have a more elaborate mind-reading act, but Pete is now too lost in his alcohol addiction to help Zeena that much. Stan, however, sees the potential in starting their act up again. He also woos quiet performer Molly (Rooney Mara). He even helps her improve her act by building an electric chair with a lot of accompanying set design that gives the whole thing an air of mad-science and danger.

Eventually, Molly and Stan do strike out on their own, taking their mind-reading act on the road and performing in hotels. But then Stan stumbles into doing a bit of medium work, helping a rich couple (Peter MacNeill, Mary Steenburgen) communicate with their son who died during World War I. It’s a trick he performs with help from Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a psychiatrist who has been treating the couple. Stan realizes that with inside knowledge from Ritter about patients’ deepest secrets, he can have a very profitable side gig of helping the wealthy obtain peace. But, as several of the carnival workers warn him, that kind of con has a lot of potential dangers.

I feel like this movie is built backward from Cate Blanchett’s femme fatale stylings (which are great because she’s always great styled that way), the mood of descending doom created by situating the movie during the early days of World War II and the blend of con-artistry and implied magic of a traveling carnival. Those are the ingredients, now build a meal from that — is what Nightmare Alley feels like. But it’s a bit like building a meal from gravy, whipped cream and nuts. Sure, there’s something there, but it doesn’t feel substantial enough to justify the giant serving dish.

Nightmare Alley is long — two and a half hours — and feels it. I feel like it could have made its points about the darkness of the human heart in at least 45 fewer minutes. The movie loads up on Chekov guns (including a literal gun that appears in the second act), and we have to wait a long time to watch each one go off in a way that is neither dramatically satisfying nor particularly necessary. I get why, with sets and costumes and a score this noirily gorgeous, the movie would want to include as much of the atmospherics as possible. But I think the performances here — Bradley Cooper feels particularly flat — are not helped by giving us more of them.

Nightmare Alley has plenty of that del Toro vibe — dark, creepy, beautiful, with interesting touches of humor — but it is otherwise fairly ho-hum. B-

Rated R for strong/bloody violence, some sexual content, nudity and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Guillermo del Toro with a screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Kim Morgan (based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham), Nightmare Alley is two hours and 28 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Searchlight Pictures.