Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgard

“WICKER” My rating: C+ (In theaters)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

”Wicker” is a great idea that after a promising beginning doesn’t go anywhere.

Co-directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (they based their screenplay on a short story by Ursula Wills), the film can boast of a great cast (Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgard, Peter Dinklage) and Oscar-worthy production design that beautifully evokes its fairy tale-ish setting.

But the film sets us up for a great romance, and then yanks the carpet out from under us.

The middle-aged Fisherwoman played by Olivia Colman (none of the characters have real names…instead they are  identified by their professions) is the object of ridicule in her little thatched-hut village. The locals make fun of her unmarried status, her fishy smell and her general lack of hygiene.

She’s endured their gibes for years, but after witnessing the burg’s latest wedding (instead of a ring on her finger the groom places a metal collar around his new wife’s neck…a not-so-subtle comment on the sexual pecking order) she decides to show her critics what’s what.

So she approaches the local Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) and pays him to build her a husband.

Apparently the Basketmaker is some kind of wizard, because he fashions from wood and reed an astonishingly handsome Wicker Man (Alexander Skarsgard, all but unrecognizable beneath makeup and prosthetics that are absolutely mesmerizing).

From the moment of his creation, apparently, the Wicker Man is devoted to the Fisherwoman. In many ways he is childlike and polite, learning the ways of the humans around him.

But when it comes to sex, well, he brings new meaning to the word “wood.” The frumpy Fisherwoman finds herself with a lover so devoted as to require frequent repairs to her bed. Almost overnight she shifts from an object of ridicule to one of envy — and resentment.

While concentrating on the couple’s physical and emotional intimacy “Wicker” is a sweet delight.  But all too soon the yarn becomes a downer.  The village women, lead by the scheming Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), resent the Fisherwoman’s happiness when compared to their own drab love lives.  They try to pry the happy couple apart.

“Wicker” promises a soul-stirring love ballad fueled by the interaction of the comically inclined Colman and the stiff  but compliant Skarsgard.  Alas, it soon devolves into an examination of sexual politics seasoned with  jealousy and venality.  You want it to sing…but it only grumbles.

The problem may be that the source material — a short story — didn’t have enough depth to flesh out an entire feature. It might have been better as a short film.

That said, production designer Renato Cseh and costumers Toth Andras Daniel and Godena-Juhasz Attila have fashioned for us a fantastic world that effortlessly incorporates eras from the Medieval to the Edwardian.

And the Wicker costume, created over 18 months by New Zealand’s Weta Workshop, could very well become as iconic as the storm troopers from the “Star Wars” universe.

| Robert W. Butler

Nathan Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes

“YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING”  My rating: A- (In theaters)

175 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It’s a documentary, sure, albeit one with a second-act twist guaranteed to tie your mind and emotions into knots.

It’s a comedy of sorts, with a filmmaker becoming  an uneasy character in a real-life psychodrama.

And it’s a deep-dive character study which, like most great examples of the genre, leaves us with as many questions as answers.

And here’s a guarantee:  After experiencing the nearly three hours of “You Can See Everything” (don’t worry…the time flies by) you’ll spend hours and days sorting all the pieces of this fascinating, maddening jigsaw puzzle.

First things first.  Filmmakers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheimer were given 24/7 access to Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her family in the month leading up to her serving an 11-year sentence in a federal prison on a fraud conviction.

Holmes, of course, was the cover girl entrepreneur whose creation — a desktop machine that from a single drop of human blood could detect dozens of diseases and conditions — has been dismissed as a giant con job.

 Why would anyone so embroiled in legal issues want their lives placed under a cinematic microscope? Holmes claims that she has nothing to hide and wants to counter the lies she says have been spread about her and her work…although clearly this could backfire.

And so here we are, more or less residing with Holmes, her fiancé Billy Evans and their two small children in a rented beach house near San Diego.

Director Oppenheimer stays behind the camera (cameras, actually,…there seem to have several running at all times).  His colleague Fielder — a sometimes comedy actor who in the past has specialized in cheekily subversive interviews — is front and center, sleeping in the guest room, hovering over family gatherings, asking questions, making comments.

On occasion Fielder has a sort of Woody Allen moment when it’s obvious that he’s not entirely comfortable with his fly-on-the-wall vantage point. He’s particularly nervous  standing by as Holmes’ partner takes a shower (the full frontal nudity earned the doc an R rating).  You’ve got to ask:  Did Holmes’ mean for her promise that “You can see everything” to include her fiance’s penis? Did Evans ask (or even demand) to be filmed naked? Hmmm…

At first, anyway, the family dynamic seems pretty normal.  The kids are obviously loved and well cared for.  Holmes and Evans cook and clean and play with their offspring on the beach.

Fielder’s interviews with Holmes are both revelatory and frustrating.  After being confronted with her unblinking baby blues and seeming lack of guile, one understands how big brains like Henry Kissinger could have been schmoozed into supporting her Theranos project. She’s a True Believer.

Holmes maintains her innocence, stating flatly that the Theranos technology is valid and that if there was fraud being perpetrated it was the fault of her former boyfriend and business partner, Ramesh Balwani (who plays no part in this film).

For a woman facing prison she’s surprisingly upbeat.  Oh, there are a few tearful moments, but  more often than not her face exhibits a smile of hopeful anticipation.  She seems preternaturally calm. In fact, her emotional range appears stunted.

Fielder shows her a video of the old Abbott & Costello routine “Who’s on First” and while recognizing that it’s funny (you can hear an audience roaring on the clip) Holmes cannot say why.  She doesn’t understand that “Who” is the name of the player on first base.

Is she on the spectrum? And if so, does that mean that she’s vulnerable to emotional manipulation despite her apparent high IQ?

Fielder also devotes much time to Evans, a handsome and vaguely imperious fellow who says the couple fell in love at first sight and are such soulmates that they speak for each other. We’ll find out later that mostly he speaks for her.

Billy Evans, Elizabeth Holmes

At one point Fielder asks Holmes to watch actress Amanda Seyfried (who won both an Emmy and a Golden Globe) portraying her in the 2022 miniseries “The Dropout.” It’s too much for Holmes, who folds into a fetal retreat.

This first act ends with Holmes entering a prison in Texas. But “You Can See Everything” is just starting to get interesting.

Clearly the filmmakers had hit an impasse.  Once behind bars their access to Holmes was limited.  Fielder could visit her in prison but filming or taping her was prohibited.

They continued to follow Evans, who is collecting technology and money to launch a new 2.0 version of Theranos.  They talk to his investors and collaborators, all of whom see the original Theranos as a promising but mishandled blip in the march of progress. (What the hell…I hope they’re onto something. If it works it will revolutionize diagnostic medicine.)

And they reveal that Evans — seemingly without Holmes knowing about it — strong-armed the movie studio A24 into giving him a percentage of the documentary’s profits…a virtually unheard of concession. (A final postscript informs us that eventually Evans dropped his demand for money.)

But how to deal with the absent Elizabeth Holmes?

Here Oppenheimer and Fielder pull an insanely clever rabbit our of their hat.  The core of their approach is to re-enact Fielder’s jailhouse meetings with Holmes using elaborate sets and professional actors.  I’d love to spill the beans on just who is portraying Holmes, but that would ruin one of the film’s great surprises.

Let’s just say that the moments that ensue take the idea of “meta” and multiply it about a hundredfold.  We’re talking conceits within conceits within conceits. It’s dizzying but delightful.

And perplexing.  Because the final word on Elizabeth Holmes, Billy Evans and Theranos is yet to be written.  Everyone will come to their own conclusions…though in my case I find closure hard to come by.

Ultimately “You Can See Everything” is about nothing less than  the elusive nature of “truth” and the unknowable complexity of the human psyche. All while being pretty damn entertaining.

| Robert W. Butler

“WHO IS MARTIN MULL”?” My rating: B+ (Netflix)

94 minutes | No MPAA rating

Like most folk, I know the late Martin Mull as a comic force from television (“Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “Fernwood Tonight,” “Roseanne” and as a long-time guest host on “The Tonight Show”), films (“Mr. Mom,” “Clue”), recordings (six albums mixing comedy and music — “A Girl Named Johnny Cash”) and live performances (caught his act years ago at the Uptown Theatre.  It was magical.)

And now I find, thanks to “Who is Martin Mull?”, that he didn’t give a hoot for any of that.  Performing was a way of underwriting his art career.

This doc began as a project by Mull’s good friend and fellow comic, Bob Saget.  The two sat down for a series of filmed conversations interrupted by Saget’s death in 2022. 

After Mull’s death in 2024 filmmaker Neil Berkeley (who’s done docs on comics Maria Bamford and Gilbert Gottfried) picked up that footage, augmenting it with talking-head interviews with Mull’s friends and admirers (Steve Martin, Patton Oswalt, David Alan Grier, Eric Idle and Laurie Metcalf…just for starters) and a slew of movie, TV and performance clips, 

The results are revelatory and just plain wonderful.

“I guess documentaries are done about people who’ve done something extremely well,” Mull apologizes to the camera. “But in my case, I think it’s like that I did a number of different things… and got at least passing grades in all of them. I don’t have a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art. I don’t have an Oscar. I don’t have a Grammy… that’s a problem in a documentary.” 

Mull’s stage persona — that of a vaguely smarmy egotist — was a part of his personality, certainly.  But it was also a cover. 

He grew up virtually ignored by his father (he was jealous because the Old Man would beat up  his brother, but not Marty) and feeling out of whack with his red-white-and-blue suburban environment.

Of his years at the Rhode Island School of Design (“It made me what I am…or destroyed what I was”) convinced him that he should devote his life to art.  Except that art didn’t pay.  

Which is how Mull drifted into the folk scene, mixing music with standup elements (or rather sit-down elements…he performed in an overstuffed chair he lugged from show to show), then got into television and all those other outlets.

He was doing well, but was miserable, describing himself as a functioning alcoholic.  Eventually he turned his life around with an assist from longtime friend and bandmate Wendy Haas, who would become his wife.

Anyway, performing allowed him to spend his spare time painting. And Holy Shit, was he good!

“Tea Party” by Martin Mull (2010)

The suburban world in which he felt so out of place became the subject of countless surreal canvases mixing photo-realism against pop art backgrounds that sometimes looked like paint-by-numbers landscapes.  He combined oil with collages, often incorporating imagery from old children’s books, magazines and family snapshots.

It’s an astounding body of work which will be celebrated next summer at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in the show “Martin Mull: The Joys of Indoor/Outdoor Living.”

Kerry Washington, Ben Affleck

“ANIMALS” My rating: C (Netflix)

106 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It features Gillian Anderson in a gratifyingly bizarre performance, but other than that “Animals” is a sad ripoff.

Directed by Ben Affleck and written by Affleck, Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray, “Animals” is a shameless steal from Kurosawa’s acclaimed 1963 kidnap drama “High and Low,” which was remade last year by Spike Lee with the title “Highest 2 Lowest.”  Lee had the decency to credit his movie as “based on” the Kurosawa classic; Affleck and his co-conspirators apparently lack that quality.

Affleck stars as attorney Mark Kimball, currently in the final stages of his campaign for mayor of Los Angeles. 

Kimball is so obsessed with winning that he spends most of his time with his scheming campaign manager, Sam (Steven Yuen), more or less ignoring his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington), who is having a secret affair with another man, and their son Denny (Christopher Woodley). There’s also the uncomfortable fact that without telling his family Kimball has mortgaged everything they own to finance his run.

But that’s all background. The yarn kicks into gear when Denny fails to return home from trick-or-treating and they get a mysterious call from a man who claims to have taken the boy.  He wants millions for the kid’s return.

As was the case with the Kurosawa film, the bad guy has snatched the wrong child.  Instead of Denny he’s taken the son of the Kimballs’ housekeeper (Adriana Paz) and gardener (Luis Geraro Mendez). After way too  much soul searching the couple decide they must step up and pay the ransom.

Gillian Anderson

Except…they no longer have any money.  Enter Anderson as Dayle Burton, some sort of high society fixer who cruises around in a stretch limo (her driver is also an assassin), dresses all in white and shows the emotional range of an ice cube.

As written the role is ridiculous — Dayle just happens to have several million in cash in her car trunk and apparently knows more about kidnapping schemes than any cop. Also she’s demanding major interest on her “loan” to the Kimballs.

Thing is, Anderson’s perf is so fascinating that she lifts the film out of it cliched quagmire. Believable? Not for a minute. But with an empty enterprise like this one you take what comfort you can.

The Kimballs come off as wealthy, self-obsessed assholes.  Whether this was Affleck and Crew’s intention I don’t know.  But “Animals” gives us few characters to root for.

| Robert W. Butler

Florence Pugh

“EAST OF EDEN”  (Netflix)

What most of us know about John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel East of Eden comes from Elia Kazan’s 1955 screen adaptation…which is to say we don’t know much aside from the fact that it was one of only three movies made by cult hero James Dean before his early death.

Kazan’s film jettisoned more than half of the book’s narrative, settling on the second half, the traumatic coming-of-age tale of twin brothers in turn-of-the-century rural California.  In doing so the movie lost the novel’s epic (one might even say Biblical) scope, a study of familial dysfunction passed down through generations.

Now we have Netflix’s seven-part “East of Eden,” created and scripted, ironically enough, by Kazan’s actress granddaughter Zoe Kazan. It is, for better or worse, tremendously faithful to the book.

It also features Florence Pugh delivering one of the most devastating performances you’ve ever  seen. Despite the overall high quality of the acting, it’s safe to say this “East of Eden” is pretty much her show.

Her character, Cathy, appeared only briefly in the ’55 film and then only as the bloated, aging madam of a Salinas bordello. But in this miniseries she’s the linchpin on which the drama turns…when she’s not on screen the show is OK, but when she’s front and center you cannot look away.

We first see her beaten to a bloody pulp and crawling across a plowed field toward a Massachusetts farmhouse.  There she is discovered by bachelor brothers Adam and Charles Trask (Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist), who take her in and send for the local sawbones.

The series’ episodes have been structured in such a way as to introduce the main characters as adults and then delve into their pasts.

Thus we see Adam and Charles as boys (played by Asher Whitehead and Gus Turner), being reared by their martinet of a father (Tracy Letts), a cruel blowhard who has parlayed his brief Civil War service into a full-time gig in the Washington  bureaucracy.  The brothers have been twisted in different ways by their sneering sire…Adam is cowed and naive, Charles tough and cynical.

Moving ahead we find Adam playing nursemaid to the recuperating Cathy; Charles doesn’t trust her for a minute.  Obviously, Adam is falling for his beautiful (once the blood has been wiped off) patient.

Then we get an entire episode keyed to Cathy’s childhood (she’s played as a teen by Ella Gillan) in a deeply religious family and her growing anger at the limited options available a woman in that time and place.  She proves herself to be something of a shape shifter, hiding her true personality to adapt to her circumstances.

Mike Faust, Christopher Abbott, Florence Pugh

We quickly realize that Cathy is profoundly amoral, if not downright sociopathic. She will literally kill to realize her independence.

Married to the clueless but desperately adoring Adam, she resettles with him on a California ranch and gives birth to twin boys. (Are they Adam’s or his brother Charles’?) Feeling trapped, she abandons her family, vanishing into the world of prostitution.

Thereafter the heartbroken Adam barely moves from his rocking chair. Young Cal and Aron are basically reared by their Chinese cook/housekeeper (Hoon Lee) and a garrulous neighbor (Ciaran Hinds).  (Lee and Hinds are a revelation, belying the old notion that nice guys are boring.) 

Hoon Lee, Ciaron Hinds

Running throughout “East of Eden” are intimations of the biblical Cain and Abel.  Just as Adam is compassionate and his brother Charles hard, so is Aron (Joe Anders) the good son and Cal (Joseph Zada) the black sheep who acts impetuously and is always in and out of trouble. (Zada has  his work cut out for him…the role of Cal will always belong to James Dean, whose ability to sell adolescent angst  is unsurpassable.)

Now all of this is fine.  But what sticks with the viewer are the moments when the narrative turns to Cathy as she worms her way into the good graces of an aging brothel owner (Martha Plympton) and in short order inherits the operation.

Pugh’s Cathy is conscienceless, a demonic succubus who radiates allure but sees sex merely as a means to an end. She’s one of the nastiest pieces of work ever depicted, but in Pugh’s hands she is not only watchable but compelling. This perf is nuanced beyond belief. There’s something almost heroic in Cathy’s determination to be her own person. You’ll find yourself  reluctantly admiring her unapologetic quest for agency and self-realization. Ayn Rand would have loved her.

“East of Eden” has been directed by Garth Davis and Laure de Clement-Tonnerre, who eschew cinematic tricky for straightforward storytelling.  The production values are first rate, my only complaint being that 1900s Salinas CA is depicted as having massive European-style stone buildings inappropriate for a frontier farming community (BTW the show was filmed in New Zealand).

When it’s all over, though, what we recall is Pugh as the scheming, terrifying but spellbinding Cathy. Most actors work a lifetime for a role this juicy…once this one sets up in your head there’s no getting rid of her.

| Robert W. Butler

Alan Ritchson, Henry Cavill

“THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE” My rating: C (Netflix)

202 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It’s hard to sympathize with Nazis — but that was before Guy Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” 

In this stiff-upper-lip variation on “The Dirty Dozen” a crew of British military prisoners — members of the armed services who have been condemned for their bloodthirsty ways — are sent out to sabotage a ship carrying vital supplies for Hitler’s U-Boat fleet.

Apparently the film has some basis in fact.  We’re told newly declassified documents have revealed that during WWII Winston Churchill authorized a clandestine group of killers.  The unit’s methodology was so appallingly brutal that their activities were kept a secret from the British public.  In fact, only a few highly-placed military men knew of it.

Ritchie’s retelling (the script is by Paul Tammy, Eric Johnson and Arash Amel) offers seemingly endless action scenes seasoned with big dose of black humor and a nihilist sensibility.

Not to mention the torn corpses of countless Germans unlucky enough to encounter our heroes, who positively relish the mayhem.

Leading the band of merry murderers is Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill with luxurious beard) and  a towering Swede (Alan Ritchson) who enjoys thinking up the most painful  and personal ways to dispatch Germans.  Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Henry Golding round out the crew.  Taken as a whole, they look like carousing male models.

Much of the film unfolds on the high seas as our guys pose as fishermen in an effort to sneak up on their target.

Meanwhile they have help from a couple of spies (Eliza Gonzalez and Babe Olusanmokun) who have infliltrated a German-occupied seaport on the West African coast.  There they get things ready for our guys and deal with a sadistic (is there any other kind in the movies?) German officer (Til Schweiger).

We also have Rory Kinnear as Churchill (a usually reliable actor who here didn’t convince me for a minute), Freddie Fox as Ian Fleming (yes, the creator of James Bond) and Cary Elwes as Brigadier Gubbins, the model for the Bond series’ “M.”

Viewers looking for a big fix of bloody action will get that and more.  Violence usually doesn’t bother me, but the murderous glee on display here really rubbed me the wrong way.

Bob Odenkirk

“NORMAL” My rating: C+ (HBO Max)

91 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The transformation of funny guy Bob Odenkirk into a full-fledged action star (“Nobody,” “Nobody 2”) continues with “Normal,” the latest from Brit auteur Ben Wheatley (“Kill List,” “A Field In England”).

The setting is Normal, a Midwestern farm burg in the dead of winter. Odenkirk plays Ulysses Richardson, a law enforcement floater who has been temporarily assigned to take over the sheriff’s department after the mysterious death of the old sheriff.

Ulysses is an underachiever waiting to reach retirement age.  Turns out he picked the wrong town in which to lay low.

The script by Derek Kolstad and Odenkirk kicks into gear with an attempted robbery of the local bank.  That act triggers an eruption of murder, culminating with the town being invaded by an army of Japanese Yakuza. 

 In a sort of perverse variation on “High Noon” Ulysses  finds he cannot rely on this fellow citizens for help…not because they’re cowards but because they’re all working for the bad guys.

“Normal” features a couple of sneaky guest appearances (Henry Winkler, Lena Headey) and a whole lot of spectacularly staged violence.  The tone is tongue-in-cheek, plenty of action but not the kind to leave a bad taste in your mouth.

| Robert W. Butler

“STAR WARS: THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU” My rating: C (Disney+)

132 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

We might as well accept that “Andor” was so freaking good that no other “Star Wars” spinoff comes even close to matching it.

Certainly not “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” a feature-length addition to the “Mandalorian” saga that never rises above the level of kiddie matinee filler.

Oh, it’s a technical marvel, sure.  Great sets and costuming, killer S/F and some pretty good fight scenes.

But the script (from director Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor) isn’t even up to the standards of the streaming series.  

Maybe it’s the length…each half-hour “Mandalorian” episode successfully stood alone while contributing to an expanded narrative. (They also has nifty references to past cinematic landmarks.) But at two hours plus the film’s near-complete lack of forward momentum becomes exhausting.

The plot, to the extant the movie has one, finds Mando (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) in the hire of the New Republic.  They’re bounty hunters assigned with rounding up former bigwigs of the defeated Galactic Empire who are still making trouble in various corners of the universe.

A huge chunk of the film is devoted to their attempt to rescue Rotta Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), nephew of the late Jabba and now a gladiatorial slave on a distant planet. Rotta, of course, is one of those big slug creatures whose fighting style is part sumo wrestler and part steamroller.

There are also a crew of sawed-off space mechanics who seem derived from both the Ewoks and the cartoon Minions.

Among the few recognizable human faces is that of Sigourney Weaver, playing the Republic colonel in charge of the sweep effort…she looks really bored.  Various voices are supplied by Martin Scorsese, Shirley Henderson, Stephen McKinley Henderson and others.

The yarn finds little Grogu growing into his role.  He doesn’t speak, and he still has a childlike curiosity and ravenous appetite that are forever getting him into trouble, but he’s learning to use his Jedi powers.  One comes to this effort hoping for more comic interplay between Mando and his little green sidekick, but it’s all pretty weak tea.

Pascal has only one scene without his helmet.  Mostly he provides Mando’s voice.  Two other performers, Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne, are credited respectively as Mandalorian Stunt Performer and Mandalorian Suit Performer.

Which I guess means that Pascal recorded his dialogue but was rarely on the set.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

“BACKROOMS” My rating: B- (Rent on Prime)

126 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms” defies explanation. So if you like your mysteries wrapped up with a nice tidy bow, you’re in for a long night.

Still, few films can match “Backrooms” for establishing and maintaining a waking dream from which there is no escape.

The operator of a shabby discount mall furniture store (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers in the basement a portal into a series of backrooms…a maze of what looks like an abandoned strip mall office spaces and hallways that goes on endlessly. Everything is painted in a sickly pastel yellow and lit by fluorescent ceiling fixtures.

It’s almost as hellish as a real strip mall office.

The deeper he ventures into this alternative universe, the more bizarre the architectural elements.  Doors on ceilings, slanted floors, furniture that appears to have melded with the surrounding surfaces. In the distance we can hear voices muttering in different languages.

(Just a moment here to applaud the work of production designer Danny Vermette,  who has created a sprawling backrooms world so big that it can be traversed by camera in a seemingly endless single take.) 

The screenplay by Parsons and Will Soodik establishes early on that our protagonist, Clark, is a troubled soul.  In sessions with his psychiatrist (the great Renate Reinsve, late of the Oscar-nominated “Sentimental Value”) Clark talks about his failed marriage, his struggling business and his long-dashed dream of becoming an architect.

Weirdly, his experiences in the backrooms appear to reflect— in hugely distorted form — those failures.

Eventually Clark pulls a couple of his twentysomething employees (Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell)  into an exploration of the backrooms, an experiment that proves deadly.  And late in the film the shrink finds herself trapped in her patient’s bizarre environment.

What does it all mean? Well, that’s the question.

A few years back Parsons produced a “Backrooms” internet series, and folks who are familiar with that says it goes a long way toward explaining what’s happening in the film.  But I can only go on what we’re given…including occasional appearances by Mark Duplass as Phil, who watches all this unfold on a closed-circuit TV network. Apparently the backrooms are being studied by some shadowy corporation.

“Backrooms” never quiet satisfies narratively, but environmentally speaking it is a world unto itself.  Glad I visited. Would hate to live there.

| Robert W. Butler

Quincy Tyler Bernadine, Emmy Rossum

“FURIOUS” (Hulu)

Female rage is front and center in the aptly named “Furious,” a female revenge tale that is both cathartic and deeply disturbing.

This eight-part Hulu offering owes a lot to 1987’s “Black Widow,” the Debra Winger/Theresa Russell thriller about a female serial killer who marries wealthy men and then sneakily murders them for their fortunes.

This time around the serial killer is the streetwise Catherine (Lola Petticrew), who as a teen was sex trafficked by rich and powerful men (think Epstein) and now employs an arsenal of characters and disguises to seduce and murder the guys who done her wrong.

On  her tail is Alice Black (Emmy Rossum), a one-time NYPD detective now starting her career with the FBI. Alice serves on a  joint task force with Manhattan cop Danny (Scoot McNairy) and FBI agent Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernadine), who has spent her career down in the basement investigating sex crimes.

The two women are damaged goods.  Alice was frequently physically abused by her former policeman boyfriend (Jake Lacy), while Nora is a raging alcoholic, thanks in part to a job that has her watching and cataloging kiddie porn day after day.

Both women carry a tankful of contempt for the men they work with…well. all men, actually.  Danny is the sole exception, being a soulful guy who has long adored Alice from afar.

The plot of “Furious” centers on the authorities’ efforts to identify and capture the killer. But what really gives the show depth are the deep, soul-shredding performances of the three female leads.

Catherine has been driven borderline crazy by what she endured as a young woman. But neither Alice or Nora is your usual cop-show heroine.  Both are deeply troubled and do things that repel us even as we recognize how they got to this state.

Bernadine’s Nora is particularly effective, displaying a biting sense of humor and a “screw you” attitude toward her patronizing bosses. Despite the overall grimness of the show you’ll find yourself laughing at her savage put-downs.

Lola Petticrew

Even the merciless Catherine is fully rounded.  She survives as a caregiver for a wheelchair-bound young man (comic Steve Way, whose muscular dystrophy forces him to emote through an oxygen mask). On some level theirs is a love story.

Even the smaller roles are exquisitely cast and performed: Campbell Scott and Rob Delaney as two of Catherine’s targets; PeterMcRobbie as a dying industrialist addicted to watching old sex videos of himself and his victims, and Hope Davis as his daughter and partner in crime.

The show’s six writers and four directors display a deft touch in juggling moods, and as a study in the lingering fallout of abuse “Furious” s in a class of its own.

“DANCE LIFE” (Prime Video)

Back in the bad old days dancers ran the risk of being called sissies. If you ever thought that depiction accurate, the Aussie documentary series “Dance Life” will pretty much twist your head around.

Luke Cornish’s five-part series follows first-year dance students at Australia’s Brent Academy, an arts school not unlike that depicted in the “Fame” movie and TV series.

What sticks with you from the show — even more than the spectacularly performed and filmed dance segments — is the students’ devotion to their art through pain, injury and emotional turmoil.

The primary teacher is choreographer and dancer Cassie Bartho, a familiar presence on Down Under dance stages, who combines tough love and a surprising vulnerability in guiding her students through a killer curriculum.

The kids’ stories are varied and frequently moving. One girl dances through a congenital spinal injury. Broken toes and bloody feet are everyday occurrences.

Every viewer will develop his or her own favorites. I found myself being particularly drawn to Emily Smith, whose physique is just about the opposite of your typical reed-thin ballerina. While everyone else is in shorts and halter tops, Emily hides her figure in bulky sweatshirts…clearly she has a bad case of body image. What’s surprising then, are her eruptions of energy in hiphop and breaking routines — she’s like a tsunami of determined movement.

And then there’s Archer Rose, a trans dancer whose willowy figure and long blonde hair make him an icon of sexual ambiguity.

The series follows the kids through training, rehearsals and big public performances. By the time it’s all over you don’t just want to watch them…you want to be them.

| Robert W. Butler

Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin

“THE DOG STARS” My rating: C+ (In theaters)

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

More is less.

That’s the inescapable lesson of Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars,” an overcooked adaptation of Peter Heller’s end-of-the-world novel.

On the printed page “Dog Stars” is apocalypse on an intimate scale, fueled not by big action moments but by a creeping sense of loss.  But Mark L. Smith’s screenplay pumps things up in an effort to please the lowest common denominator and the results have more in common with your average zombie flick than, say, Cormac McCarthy’s The  Road.

Ten years after a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Hig (Jacob Elori) and Bangley (Josh Brolin) eke out a living on an abandoned airstrip in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Hig is a pilot who has managed to keep one Cessna running; he periodically flies into what’s left of Denver to collect food and other necessities. He seems to be a decent guy. Hig loves his dog and visits a Mennonite community in a nearby valley to deliver food and medicine.

Bangley, on the other hand, is a long-time survivalist (no doubt he’s ex-military) who thrives on isolation. Early on he uses his long-range rifle to kill a couple of teens who have wandered into his domain.   His approach is to shoot first and question the corpses later.

The plot centers on Hig’s determination to reach Grand Junction after hearing a broadcast from that town’s airport.  Forced down by engine trouble, he stumbles upon a father and daughter  (Guy Pearce, Margaret Qualley) who have been living peacefully deep in the mountains.  The old man is suspicious of this interloper but the woman sees in Hig a last chance for a more-or-less normal existence.

The film’s first half is actually pretty good.  Then things go downhill fast.

Screenwriter Smith suddenly changes gears.  All that melancholy moodiness is tossed out on its ear in favor of two huge action sequences.  In one Hig and his newfound friends must outrace a mounted band called the Scavengers to his newly-repaired airplane.  Meanwhile Bangley undergoes  a siege by a small army of tattooed berserkers.

Jacob Elori, Margaret Qualley

Things get even more ridiculous when Hig and his new comrades set down in Grand Junction to find the place a fiefdom presided over by the bonkers Darlene (Allison Janney in scenery-chewing overdrive), who wears a spotless airline hostess outfit from the 1970s  (love the pillbox hat) and has developed an unconventional diet for her doped-up minions. (Use your imagination.)

At one point we’re supposed to believe that three hand grenades have the destructive power of a small thermonuclear device.

“The Dog Stars” at least looks good, thanks to Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography  —  though Italy’s Dolomite Mountains don’t really look much like the American Rockies.

Acting honors go to Brolin for his tough-minded, utterly unsentimental Bangley, whose brusque approach to every action provides the film’s only brief flashes of humor. 

| Robert W. Butler

Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson

“TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA” My rating: B (In theaters on Aug. 21)

112 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There’s so much to unpack in Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” that you practically need a flow chart to keep on top of all its ideas.

As the name implies, it’s a parody of those teen slasher films in which horny adolescents are carved up by a mysterious masked individual.

But it’s also a tale of sexual liberation.  And a visual tour de force.  And a sly look at the process of artistic creation.

And, believe it or not, a showcase for two of the year’s best performances.

That said, it ain’t for everyone. 

Schoenbrun’s previous film, 2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” centered on outsider teens obsessed with a cheesy ’80’s TV horror/fantasy.  It was a somber affair, sad even, but it got under my skin even if I wasn’t quite sure of just what was going on.

“Teenage Sex…,” on the other hand, is a goofy lark, albeit one that draws heavily on Schoenbrun’s own childhood and career.  

Just so you know where we’re coming from here: Schoenbrun is transgender (their early films were made under the name Dan Schoenbrun) and while in the fifth grade they devoted a month to watching every “Nightmare on Elm Street” film.  All that is in evidence in this latest effort.

The setup:  Lesbian filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder) has come to the Pacific Northwest to visit the summer camp that was the setting for her favorite series of horror flicks.  She’s planning a reboot of the “Camp Miasma” franchise, and her goal is to track down the female star of the original film.

That would be Billy (Gillian Anderson), who dropped off the map after her screen debut and for 30 years has been living as a recluse in a cabin at the long-abandoned summer camp.

Einbinder and Anderson dominate what is essentially a two-character film.  As she showed in her Emmy-winning work in “Hacks,” Einbinder is a comic engine. Here she lacks the killer one-liners that fueled “Hacks,” but makes up for it in dorky earnestness and her fan-boy mania. Kris is a post-modern intellectual, but when it comes to her unfulfilled sexual and emotional needs she’s comically childlike.

Anderson’s Billy, on the other hand, comes off a bit like a turbaned Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard,” albeit with a molasses-tinged southern accent. Sexy but weird.

Schoenbrun’s screenplay has Kris staying at the snowbound camp so as to coax Billy into signing up for her new movie.  Along the way they watch the original “Camp Miasma,” which introduced Little Death, a killer in a white hazmat suit and a head-covering mask that looks like an air duct vent.

So basically we’ve got two movies here.  The one about Kris and Billy, and then the one they’re watching on an old 16mm film projector. “Teenage Sex…” is forever shifting between the two.

Little Death

All this comes to a head when Little Death rises from the lake bottom where he/she/it has been hibernating and gets to work slashing.  Simultaneously the uptight Kris at last finds sexual liberation in Billy’s arms.

The name “Little Death” (the character is portrayed by trans actor Jack Haven, who starred in “I Saw the TV Glow” under the name Brigette Lundy-Pain) is an English translation of the French term le petite mort, a reference to  post-orgasmic bliss.

So the threat posed by Little Death drives Kris to sexual fulfillment.

Or maybe not.  Perhaps all this is just happening in Kris’ fevered mind.  

While some of “Teenage Sex…” has been shot in a real summer camp, other scenes play out against stagey  backdrops done in such a way that you have to look twice to be sure whether it’s a real forest or just painted canvas. I think it’s Shoenbrun’s way of telling us not to trust everything we see — especially when it comes to the over-the-top gore of Little Death’s killing spree.

The film is also a sort of cautionary comedy about artistic struggle.  There’s a marvelous scene which has Kris dealing with three of her producers on a Zoom call…Dylan Baker is spot on as a crass philistine who hasn’t time for Kris’ intellectual navel-gazing.  He’s the kind of guy who just wants a movie with tits and blood. A demand, by the way, that Shoenbrun slyly satisfies.

Not everything here works.  The movie-within-a-movie sequences, for example, so accurately mimic those old slasher flicks that, like the originals, they’re boring between bloodbaths. Is bad acting bad acting, even if it’s a parody of bad acting?

And Schoenbrun’s fragmented narrative style is bound to alienate literal-minded audiences. What can I say?  Dreams and nightmares don’t always make sense.  But the weirder they get the more we remember them. And  it’ll be hard to forget “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.”

| Robert W. Butler

Matt Damon

“THE ODYSSEY” My rating: B (In theaters)

172 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Didn’t love it.

Didn’t hate it.

What can I say, folks? So much hyperbole — both positive and negative — has been heaved at Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” that it’s just about impossible to approach this epic with anything like a completely open mind.

What I took away from my experience was a sense of awe at the technical precision on display (there’s not a shot in the film that doesn’t seem to have been labored over ), a real sense of a  journey that covers two decades, some riveting set pieces and a frustrating lack of emotional involvement.  (I mean, the most intense feeling is delivered by a dying dog.)

The film is peppered with familiar faces, but most of the characters are barely skin deep. 

It doesn’t feel like the film has a real point of view…yet it never feels like a slog.  There’s always something interesting to look at.

Noland has never worn his heart on his sleeve.  Most of his non-“Batman” films — from “Memento” through “The Prestige,” “Inception” and “Oppenheimer” — have been about ideas. Human emotions tend to take a back seat.

In this case it’s all about the journey.  This is both the yarn’s strength and, for dramatic purposes, its big drawback.  Homer’s poem is no well-made drama.  It’s a series of encounters — sirens, Titans, cyclops, whirlpool — without a gripping through line (except, of course, the desire of Matt Damon’s Odysseus to get back home).

Nolan’s screenplay seems unsure of just what to make of the ancient Greeks’ world view.  There’s much talk of what Zeus expects of men (in breaking that moral code Odysseus carries the burden of guilt), but the gods themselves rarely make an appearance. Zendaya does show up periodically as the goddess Athena, engaging Odysseus in conversation…but it’s pretty clear she’s a figment of his imagination. At least, none of his comrades seem to notice her.

Like just about every Nolan film, “The Odyssey” messes with time.  The film is arranged non-chronologically. The yarn drifts back and forth between Odysseus’ long voyage, the siege of Troy, his life before the Trojan war, and the travails experienced back in Ithaca by his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland).  It’s one of the smarter things Nolan has done to the material, with the past present and future all seeming to unfurl simultaneously. It keeps you slightly off balance and paying close attention.

Highlights?  Well the segment with the cyclops is genuinely awesome.  So is the vision of the Trojan horse, the wooden statue in which Odysseus and his men secret themselves in order to enter the city.

Damon is certainly watchable as our hero, but I rarely got a sense of Odysseus’ inner life. 

Hathaway has a few moments of genuine fierceness as Odysseus’ abandoned queen. Samantha Morton is riveting as Circe, the man-hating witch who transform’s Odysseys’ crew into swine.  John Leguizamo is quite good as the aged blind herdsman whose loyalty to his master spans the years.

Anne Hathaway

Absolutely loved Ruth De Jong’s art direction, especially Odysseus’ hilltop palace in Ithica and the cave where worshippers pay homage to Athena. 

Ludwig Goransson’s musical score is a hugely effective blend of sonic rumblings and primitive-sounding  whistles and drums.

Didn’t like much of the sound mix, which rendered at least half the dialogue unintelligible. 

Also, Nolan’s appropriation of modern language — did the ancient Greeks really use phrases like “okay” and refer to their fathers as “my dad”? — took me out of the moment.

And while we’re at it, very little of Nolan’s dialogue was memorable.  The Odyssey is great poetry, yet there’s nothing the least poetic about these conversations.

Bottom line: I don’t regret devoting three hours to watching ”The Odyssey.”

And I’m in no hurry to repeat the experience.