Fred Wiseman (left) and Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi at the Coolidge Corner Theater (Claire Vail).
Frederick Wiseman, the critically revered documentarian whose films mapped the moral frame of American life, died Monday at 96 at his home near Porter Square, in the city he in many ways, spent a career studying.
Born in Boston in 1930 and trained as a lawyer (Yale Law and a stint in the army) before turning to filmmaking, Wiseman carried a jurist’s sensibility into cinema — gathering evidence, observing behavior, withholding judgment. His camera did not accuse; it revealed. His body of work may be one of the most sustained portraits of modern democratic society ever assembled on film.
Written and directed by Brent Dawes and Phil Cunningham, “David”’s animation is on par with Pixar. It sticks to the part of the Biblical story that chronicles the rise of the young shepherd and poet who would become the unifying King of Israel. Of course, David slays Goliath, repels the Philistines, deals with King Saul’s January 6th cling to power and ultimately makes Jerusalem the capital of Israel — all this around 1,000 BC. David (well voiced by Brandon Engman) is an earnest, reluctant leader full of brio, no matter the tall odds.
Scenes of battle and violent conflict are tres G-rated—think fights in “The Lion King.” As David matures as a military leader, he is not the conflicted warrior king depicted in the streaming series “House of David” and the Bible itself, the one who commits adultery with Bathsheba and subsequently hatches a plot to kill her husband. No, this David often breaks into song and follows prophecy to the letter. It’s crisp animation and tight story-telling.
Eyeballs are gouged, testicles put to a blade, and blood spurts in this Sam Rami film. It’s not quite as gory as Rami’s “Evil Dead” films, but it is not exactly shy. Rachel McAdams, dorked out with greasy hair and frumpy clothes, plays an office drone at some cutting-edge tech company. Linda Little is a numbers geek, apt to rise from her cubicle and chat up her bosses with tuna fish smeared to her upper lip. Bradley Preston (played by Dylan O’Brien of “Maze Runner”), becomes Linda’s new boss after his father dies (“Evil Dead”’s Bruce Campbell). Bradley, the jerk, welches on a promised promotion and relocates her to a new Bangkok office. Linda learns of the betrayal en route to Thailand with Bradley and his biz-school bros. The plane goes down, and Linda—a “Survivor” aficionado who has dreamed of a role on the show—suddenly becomes indispensable in hunting, kindling and scavenging. The sex-and-power reversal evokes Ruben Östlund’s darker “Triangle of Sadness” (2022). But “Send Help,” driven by flimsy pretexts for improbable hidden agendas, takes a softer bite of social commentary. The film has Linda and Bradley transitioning from uneasy codependency to something resembling “Lord of the Rings” without earning it. What begins as an empowerment fantasy grows banal. “Send Help” is whimsically entertaining. McAdams’s bravado carries the paunchy plot.
Faster, angrier and meaner—that’s how folks have come to like their zombies since director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland flipped the genre on its head in 2002’s “28 Days Later.” They introduced a “rage virus” that transformed infected humans into berserk, flesh-rending decathletes on crack. George Romero’s shamblers could barely hold the beer of these boss-level zombies and a series was hatched. The latest entry, “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” is chomping its way through theaters. Boyle and Garland have dropped in and out of the series. Neither were onboard for the 2007 follow up, “28 Weeks Later” (perhaps its best chapter), but reunited last year for “28 Years Later”—the ostensible cornerstone of a trilogy, now a tetralogy probably still not complete. Garland wrote the script for “Bone Temple” but Boyle hands directorial duties to Nia DaCosta, who caught our eye with their 2021 “Candyman” remake, lost us with their insipid “Marvels” meander in 2023, but regained our interest with last year’s opulent and bawdy “Hedda.” DaCosta may not be a top orchestrator of character and the human element, but they do have a formidable visual sense, and “Bone Temple” is strikingly framed — be it scenes of bloody butchery or serene countryside meadows. Its rampant gore is hard to look away from.
At the end of last year’s first act, our pre-teen protagonist Spike (Alfie Williams) had left his family’s island enclave to seek answers on the mainland. There he teamed up with Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell) and his band of lost boys, known as the Jimmys. A cartoonish ending (golf clubs and parkour to take out the “infected”) offered a wisp of hope. But “Bone Temple” finds them in a place that is dark, sinister and grim.
The sequel opens with Spike in a death match to earn his into Jimmy’s gang. O’Connell’s Jimmy presides over the fray, a cartoonish Nero savoring the slow demise of another. The film’s other thread reunites us with Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), curator of the Bone Temple ossuary — pillars of bleached ulnas and tibias surrounding a tower of skulls — and observer of the infected. Kelson, slathered in iodine (which staves off the virus), has developed the neat trick of using morphine darts to tranquilize zombie Alphas, infected that can rip the spine from a human like blowing their nose. This allows him to bond with one regular visitor that he names Samson (six-foot-eight former MMA fighter Chi Lewis-Parry, who looks like Jason Momoa’s maxi-me). It’s an intriguing relationship, with Kelson something of a fatherly Frankenstein seeking to strike connection and balance.
Jimmy has a different relationship with the “infected.” He was the young boy watching the “Teletubbies” in act one’s preamble when his da, a priest, embraced the horde descending on his house and church as a divine intervention (Jimmy is the only one who escapes). Jimmy’s character is inspired by flamboyant, blonde-wig wearing 1960s–’80s British TV host Jimmy Savile, who was revealed after his death in 2011 to have been a prolific pedophile and sexual predator. But Jimmy and his wig-wearing minions put another evil layer on things — they roam the countryside pillaging and torturing other quarantined survivors in the name of Old Nick (another name for Satan). It’s a bit of a leap, but one that DaCosta, O’Connell, and Garland mostly make stick.
O’Connell was also a villain in “Sinners,” playing the opportunistic vampire Remmick in Ryan Coogler’s imaginative, genre-blending period piece and current awards contender. At least Remmick had a code. Jimmy is an amoral sadist with a deity complex and an intense amount of charm, which makes him twice as lethal.
The Kelson and Jimmy threads eventually converge, not because of Spike’s prior connection to Kelson, but through Jimmy’s manipulation when he deems Kelson Old Nick himself due to his Satan-red application of iodine — a claim Jimmy weaponizes to cement his authority over his restless charges.
“Bone Temple” moves in strange and unexpected ways that mostly work. When it falters, Sean Bobbitt’s rich visuals and a knockout performance by Fiennes easily carry it past the rough patches. Williams, too, is strong as the torn and vulnerable youth roped into an unenviable and horrific existence, Lewis-Parry gives anuanced turn as the massive, naked Alpha. O’Connell is just as (for better or worse) pop-off-the-screen audacious here as he was in the waning moments of last year’s film.
Those expecting waves of zombie carnage may be surprised by “Bone Temple.” Its ugliest horrors come from human cruelty dressed up as moral purpose, acts Jimmy chillingly tags as “charity.” These are often peek-through-your-fingers grim. As with previous entries in the series, “Bone Temple” closes on a note of wary hope, punctuated by a big reveal that promises that the “28 Years” saga will shamble on.
There’s little surprising or new in “The Long Walk” despite its pedigree, passion and professionalism. It’s still a compelling and emotionally charged tale primarily because of those three Ps – and the grim prospect of how much further we as a society can fall. It’s based on Stephen King’s first novel, written as a student while at the University of Maine but not published until 1979; even then it went under King’s pen name of Richard Bachman, like “The Running Man.”
In “Walk,” we get dropped into a dystopian America in the late 1960s or ’70s. It takes a while to register, but the unhappy alter reality has the distinct tang of “The Mist” or “The Stand”: The United States has just emerged from a war, but the country is not the portrait of Ozzie and Harriet productivity we’ve all been sold on. Much of what we see in our limited lens is the depressed and the needy. Most of the people we see along the long stroll could use a hot shower, a bowl of hot soup and some new threads.
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.
Crowds jeer in James Gunn’s recently released “Superman.”
James Gunn’s “Superman” swooped into theaters a week ago and knocked it out of the park with more than $125 million at the domestic box office. Not bad for a flat-footed rebrand that’s a long way from “Jaws,” which 50 years ago became the pindrop for the blockbuster, pulling in more than $260 million ($1.5 billion by today’s standards), with the eventual Academy Award winner that year (and No. 2 in box office totals), “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” taking in less than 40 percent of that. With that success, Spielberg’s gambit forever altered filmmaking and the way we see films; producers began seeking ready-made target audiences and the next big onscreen wow that would blow watchers’ minds and create lines to the ticket booth.
As laid out, this latest in the Danny Boyle-Alex Garland zombie apocalypse series is more reboot than a trilogy closeout for “28 Days Later” (2002) and “28 Weeks Later” (2007). In fact, it’s alleged to be the start of a new trilogy, with “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” already slated for 2026. But two films, a cinematic hat-trick does not make.
We also need to clear the chronology slate, 28 years later is not 2053, but more around now – 2030, if we extrapolate from the release date of “28 Days Later.” As with the other films, the setting is Britain, which still is the only infected area in the world as far as we know – in “Weeks,” as well as here, there are implications that the “rage virus” may be elsewhere, but it’s teaser. As to why survivors still reside on the isle of Britain: The island nation is quarantined and its coast patrolled rigorously by other countries – France and Sweden, at least.
The creepy horror shenanigans of YouTubers-turned-filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou caught fire with their feature debut “Talk to Me” (2022), which played smartly with genre, race and mythos. It didn’t all click, but you couldn’t forget it. With their follow-up, “Bring Her Back,” the brothers reach a new level in psychological horror that features several grim, look-away scenes.
Things begin badly for brother and sister Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), who come home after school and find their father dead on the bathroom floor. Piper is legally blind (she can see shapes and light, and that’s about it) and the protective Andy is months shy of his 18th birthday, ineligible to get custody. Complicating matters, there are documented incidents of violence in Andy’s past. Initially, child services wants to split the two up, but a saving grace comes in the form of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former child services worker who lost her daughter in a recent drowning accident and is caretaking for another foster child, a mute 10-year-old by the name of Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips).
As the sibs settle in at Laura’s remote bungalow, there’s hope in the air, but something’s clearly off. Laura’s chatty and welcoming, but also controlling, spouting out a litany of rules and regs between awkward hugs. Piper is given the daughter’s room – which, bathed in pink and bejeweled with beads, has been maintained like a shrine – while Andy is relegated to a utility closet of sorts that has barely enough room for his mattress and a workout bench. The first real tell comes when we meet Oliver, a lithe androgynous sort with a faraway look in his eyes, standing shirtless and barefoot at the bottom of the drained pool out back, holding the cat that’s “not to be let out of the house” like he’s about to break its neck. Damien, the kid from “The Omen” (1976), has nothing on Oliver. And there are those strange red marks under his eyes; hard to tell if they’re birthmarks or the result of some occult ritual.
Reviewed: ‘The Monkey’ and ‘Elevation’ in theaters and streaming now
‘The Monkey’ (2025)
Osgood Perkins, a dead ringer for dad Anthony Perkins (“Psycho”), continues the family tradition from the other side of the lens with this spin on horror master Stephen King’s 1980 short story. The not-so-slow burn is set in Casco, Maine, where we open with Capt. Petey Shelborn (Adam Scott) walking into a pawn shop covered in blood to fix his windup mechanical monkey. After a flamethrower, a speargun and a rat enter the scene, we learn that the monkey is not a toy, a point hammered home regularly by those possessing it. It is something evil, if not death itself. Its victims of ghoulish, cartoonish circumstance are random – only the person winding up the monkey is safe. When the monkey plays its drum, anyone nearby is at risk. Petey’s twin sons Hal and Bill (both Christian Convery) later discover the monkey in a closet in their unhappy home; their dad is now a deadbeat, as their mom, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), tells us. A few cranks of the monkey’s key by the curious kids and mayhem ensues among mom, babysitter Annie Wilkes (Danica Dreyer) and Uncle Chip (Perkins), who moved in to care for the boys with his swinger wife, Aunt Ida (Sarah Levy). The twins behead the mechanical monkey, throw it in the trash and down a well, but it always returned. Flash forward 25 years, and Hal (now played by Theo James) works at a supermarket and visits his own son Petey (Colin O’Brien) once a year out of fear of cursing him. Hal, the film’s occasional narrator, tells us that he and his brother don’t get along. Bill is now totally unhinged and wants to bond with the windup wingding of disaster, with Petey and Hal looped in to his demented scheme as much of Casco gets sent to the great beyond in bloody ways. Part of the fun is Theo James’s yin-and-yang roles as the buttoned-up, protective and paranoid Hal and the delusional Bill, who sports a pseudo-mullet and “damn it all to hell” gusto. Elijah Wood (“Lord of the Rings”) pops in for a dark turn as dim-witted Ted, employed by Bill to retrieve the monkey. Levy’s Aunt Ida is unforgettable for all the wrong reasons, with an unsettling sexual aura and a plotline that’s a creepshow instant classic.
For What it's Worth 