Ethan Coen and co-writer and wife Tricia Cooke reteam with actor Margaret Qualley for the second of a purported loose lesbian neo-noir trilogy. That first outing, last year’s “Drive-Away Dolls,” was a bit of a rickety start, but through no fault of Qualley, who packed the punchy best of both Thelma and Louise as one of two gal pals who zoom off in a car with various factions of angry patriarchy hot on their tail. It was a concept in search of a story. Here, Coen and Cooke dial up the noir aspect and concoct something more worthy of Qualley’s onscreen allure.
She plays Honey O’Donahue, a private detective working the dusty, depressed streets of Bakersfield, California. There’s trouble right off the bat as an angular French woman (Lera Abova) in leopard-skin tights navigates the scree of a ravine to get to an inverted car, its driver dead or dying. She’s not there to help, but to pluck a signet ring off a finger, and in the next scene Abova’s agent of cold deeds is floating casually full frontal in a nearby quarry pond. An important fashion note: As she clads up, there’s a Garanimals moment as we realize her underwear and bra match her motorbike helmet.
The latest Spike Lee Joint might not be the director’s tightest, but it is a passion project as playful as it is nostalgic. New York gets a lot of love, as do Spike’s earlier films – Rosie Perez and Nick Turturro show up in pop-off-the-screen bits – and New York sports teams. The last time Lee adapted a film that was considered an untouchable masterpiece (Park Chan-wook’s “Old Boy”) didn’t go so well; it felt flat, a rote redoing. He’s done better here in reenvisioning Akira Kurosawa’s great 1963 kidnap noir, “High and Low” starring the indelible Toshiro Mifune and adapted from Ed McBain’s novel “King’s Ransom,” flipping a shoe executive whose son is targeted for kidnapping during a corporate merger for a music mogul arguably fashioned after Jay-Z. Denzel Washington reunites with Lee for the first time in 19 years (they have five collaborations, with the previous being “Inside Man”) to play the exec, David King, looking to buy back control of his records label when the kidnapping goes down. The ransom is $17.5 million, which is the money David needs to get his Stackin’ Hits back. But there’s a hitch: Who’s snatched from camp is not David’s son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) but Kyle (Elijah Wright), the son of his loyal chauffeur and right hand man Paul (Jeffery Wright, Elijah’s dad IRL), mistaken for Trey by the kidnapper. It’s here that David has a crisis of conscience when he balks at paying for Kyle, causing a rift between David and Paul and raising questions of character and selfishness from David’s wife (Ilfenesh Hadera, elegant with a capital E) and son.
Somerville TheatreSomerville Theatre Crystal Ballroom Movie Trivia nights draw more than 150 people monthly, as seen from the POV of the scorekeeper.
Somerville Theatre Crystal Ballroom Movie Trivia nights are a raucous two hours of competitive film fan fun for self-anointed cinephiles and trivia tricksters looking to flaunt deep stores of knowledge to attain factoid alpha status.
The nights, on the third Tuesday of the month, are hosted by Billy Thegenus, program and outreach coordinator at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline and Ian Brownell, co-owner of CSB Theaters (with longtime theater manager Ian Judge), which runs the Somerville Theatre.The events have drawn 150-plus people – or 20-ish teams of five to six – to the Crystal Ballroom space. You can show up with your own, ready-to-roll crew or go freelance and hop on with a duo or trio needing a trivia turbo boost.
Seeking something different and off the beaten path, I saw that Amazon had just dropped a new version of “War of the Worlds” starring Ice Cube and Eva Longoria. It gave me pause. Didn’t Spielberg and Cruise redo this right back in 2005? Still, I was curious. What I got for my inquisitive sins was the H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic told lamely through Zoom screens, with a professorial-looking Ice Cube as a defense scientist hooting inanely at a computer screen (“kick their asses!”) as tanks blast away at the wispy robotic walkers of the invading aliens. It’s nearly unwatchable, maybe the worst film of 2025, which is why I turned for relief to Emilio Mauro’s made-in-Boston, lo-fi, corporate culture kick-in-the-pants – something I took a gamble on reluctantly when Mauro reached out to me, but I’m glad I did. The film unfolds over the course of a business day in a generic office space of cubicles and white-slatted blinds, a drab labyrinth of toil and tension known as the fictional Haskin Rogers Corp. Just what Haskin Rogers makes its bank on is smartly never articulated, we just know that there are deals in the works, killer office parties and that the mantle of power has just been passed from papa Haskins (Brian Goodman) to son (Steve Memmolo). The company’s no-nonsense HR director, Tracy (Alexis Knapp, “Pitch Perfect”), serves as the film’s proxy for ferreting out hypocrisy and the isms flowing freely in water cooler byways. It starts from the moment we roll in at 9 a.m., slyly labeled “Time does not heal all wounds,” as a fairly well-ensconced employee is fired for homophobic and anti-Islamic tweets made in high school and college. Much of the film’s success comes from the strong performances of the all-in ensemble, namely Ritchie Coster as Greg, a senior player who wants the company’s lone Black woman (Daphne Blunt) fired because of her racy social media presence and alleged romantic ties to a valued client makes regular, off-the-cuff barbs about the new trans hire. Greg’s back-and forths with Tracy propel the film and underscore the divides. The most recognizable name in the cast is Natasha Henstridge (“Species”) as an enigmatic, outside power broker with the last name of Rogers. Other that shine are Damien Di Paola (“Chappaquiddick”) as a “Goodfellas”-talking task master strong-arming underlings and crossing a few lines himself, and character actor Paul Ben-Victor, who charms as a higher-up cynically sick of the corporate swim. Mauro’s script is airtight, irreverent and pushes the envelop the way Neil LaBute’s “In the Company of Men” edgily did nearly 30 years ago. On the matter of race, the film has a bit of a “Crash” (2004) arc to it. In the opening credits, we’re told that the film’s based on “true events” that happened here a while back and made national headlines; to divulge more would be to do the film and the viewer a disservice. “Another Day in America” played as party of the Boston Independent Film Festival, not to be confused with International Film Festival Boston, and just dropped onto streaming platforms.
Zach Cregger’s follow-up to his 2022 surprise art house horror hit “Barbarian” builds just as confidently with mood, moxie and acrid, enigmatic tugs. “Weapons” has you from the get-go as a young child from the fictional town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, informs in a soft, reflective voice-over how one night 17 children exited their suburban homes at the exact moment of 2:17 a.m. and, holding their arms out like birds about to take flight, ran into the night and vanished. There’s a liberating joyousness to the otherwise ominous exodus. The next day at school, we learn that all were students of a new teacher, Justine Grundy (Julia Garner, “The Assistant,” “Ozark”), so when Justine walks in, the classroom is empty except for one: Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), a small, quiet boy and the subject of regular bullying.
Parents are understandably upset and want answers. During a town meeting, Justine is blamed and castigated for her inability to provide answers. Later, her car is vandalized with the ominous tag of “witch” in bold red letters.
This image released by Neon shows Alison Brie, left, and Dave Franco in a scene from “Together.” (Ben King/Neon via AP)
In this claustrophobic, psycho-horror thriller written and directed by first-timer Michael Shanks, there’s much to impress – but it doesn’t, at least to the degree it should, through familiarity; once into it, “Together” plays like an homage to Ari Aster’s art-house horror hits “Heredity” (2018) and “Midsommar” (2019) with a few pages lifted from Brandon Cronenberg’s growing catalog of body-horror and Coralie Fargeat’s gloriously grim “The Substance” (2024). “Together” is conceptually and ideologically about codependence the way “Get Out” (2017) was about racism. We embed with real-life husband and wife Dave Franco and Alison Brie – who together starred in the 2020 Vrbo-from-hell thriller “The Rental” – as Tim and Millie, who move to a remote area for Millie’s new job as a schoolteacher. Tim, a slacker man-boy with only part-time gigs as a guitarist, tags sheepishly along. We know the couple’s got issues, as Millie tells a friend at their going-away party that Tim doesn’t like to “do it” anymore, and when she proposes to him at party, on bent knee with a mimed ring in a jewelry box, he balks. In the quiets near their new woodsy abode, they go for a hike and end up slipping through a sinkhole into a cave with a well seemingly designed by crew from the “Alien” films. “Don’t drink the water,” you shout silently at the screen. But they do, and when they pass out, waiting for the light of day to find a way out, they wake up, joined at the hips – kinda. Some rending, a little bit of pain and a few small tear wounds solve it. Tim writes it off as mildew, but later, back home at night and in bed, Millie’s hair starts to grow down Tim’s throat; when Tim finally gets up his nerve with Millie, he can’t pull out postcoitus. The sticky situations mount, while Millie’s passive-aggressive colleague just down the lane seems to be holding out on critical information. The performances by Brie and Franco, as a capable woman angling for adulthood and cuck in need of a clue, forge seamless onscreen chemistry. What doesn’t quite work is a third act in which revelations fall literally out of the closet with clunky awkwardness. Not worth a long-term commitment.
For What it's Worth 