Review: 'The Monkey' is a horror movie dripping in blood and humorous irony, but the mix doesn't always hold together

If the “Saw” movies kept their gore but were repurposed as farcical comedies, they might look a lot like “The Monkey,” in which writer-director Osgood Perkins reveals his funny bone — and a lot of other bones, blood and viscera as well.

Freely adapted from a Stephen King short story, “The Monkey” starts with a frantic pilot (Adam Scott, in an unnerving cameo) entering a pawn shop trying to unload a wind-up monkey that plays a drum. Before the pilot can make a deal, the monkey starts banging on its drum — and when it stops, something awful happens.

The action then moves to the pilot’s sons, twin brothers Bill and Hal (played as teens by Christian Convery). The twins share a mutual animosity, as Bill bullies Hal and blames Hal for their dad leaving their mom, Lois (Tatiana Maslany). The boys start exploring the stuff Dad left behind, and find a massive hatbox that contains a drumming wind-up monkey.

It doesn’t take long to discover the monkey’s secret: When it finishes playing its drum, someone nearby dies horribly. The monkey also can’t be directed to killing a specific person (“it doesn’t take requests,” young Hal says at one point). So, after some gruesome deaths — which Perkins presents with the complex absurdity of a Rube Goldberg contraption — the boys decide to throw the monkey down the deepest well they can find.

Move forward 25 years, to the present day, and the adult Hal (now played by Theo James) lives a solitary life, avoiding contact with his twin and his son, Petey (Colin O’Brien). On his one week of the year when he has custody, Hal and Petey find their theme park plans upended when the monkey resurfaces — as does Bill. 

Perkins, the guy behind last year’s creepy “Longlegs,” seems to be having lots of fun devising clever ways for characters to die in freakish and gruesome ways. He also features a fair share of oddballs, including the twins’ brash Aunt Ida (Sarah Levy, from “Schitt’s Creek”), a fumbling priest (Nicco Del Rio), and Petey’s self-help guru stepdad (Elijah Wood). 

But Perkins doesn’t maintain a consistent tone between the blood-splattered hilarity and the more complicated handling of Hal’s emotional state, and the movie suffers for it. Perkins is a seriously good director, but he needs to work on balancing the serious with the silly.

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‘The Monkey’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violent content, gore, language throughout and some sexual references. Running time: 98 minutes.

Review: 'No Other Land' gives an inside look at Palestinians being forced off their land, and offers a viewpoint not often seen

The documentary “No Other Land” chronicles life in a group of Palestinian villages on the West Bank — and if merely mentioning the setting doesn’t clue you in on the complexities of the narrative, you haven’t been paying attention.

The Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta say their families have lived on this part of the West Bank for more than a century. The Israeli officials and soldiers who occupy the land say otherwise, that the land is a training area for their tanks — and the Israeli courts have upheld that claim. 

So, as the movie shows, Israeli soldiers regularly come to a house, order the residents out with barely enough time to gather their belongings, and then direct construction vehicles to tear the house down. The people living there often move into nearby caves, which anyone would agree is a poor substitute for four walls and a roof.

Two Palestinians, Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, and two Israelis, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, are the credited directors of “No Other Land.” Adra and Abraham are also two of the film’s main subjects. Adra grew up in Masafer Yatta, with parents who taught him to protest, and has filmed the destruction of his peoples’ homes for years. Abraham is a journalist based in Jerusalem, who makes repeated trips to Masafer Yatta to cover what’s happening — and to convince his Israeli editors that the story is worth pursuing.

The filmmakers make their feelings about the conflict quite clear — and whether a viewer agrees or disagrees is probably determined by one’s views of the Middle East as a whole. The Palestinians shown here are desperate, unable to win in court or in the field, risking arrest from Israeli soldiers and violence from Israeli settlers. The filmmakers depict the soldiers as rigid, their civilian leaders as uncaring and callous, and the settlers as a mob.

It’s important to note that filming for “No Other Land” started in the winter of 2019, and ended in the fall of 2023, just before the attacks by Hamas militants that killed some 1,200 Israelis and prompted airstrikes and a ground offensive on Gaza that has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and countless numbers displaced. It’s also worth noting that some of the reasons Hamas gave for mounting their attacks — Israeli raids in the West Bank, attacks by settlers against Palestinians, and expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied lands — are the things chronicled in this film.

Does what the filmmakers show justify Hamas’ attacks? Of course not, and most everyone would say “no” — just as many would say the ferocity of the Israeli military in Gaza isn’t justified by what Hamas did. I, like the majority of Americans, don’t know enough about the long history of Israelis and Palestinians to express anything but a naive hope that a solution can be found without violence from either side.

I can also hope — again, naively — that more Americans can seek out information about this intractable conflict, including watching “No Other Land.” The movie, though it has won awards at festivals and is nominated for an Academy Award, does not have a U.S. distributor. According to The New York Times, the filmmakers are self-distributing the movie to 23 cities, including Salt Lake City, with plans of a larger rollout. Here’s hoping as many people as possible will see it.

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‘No Other Land’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for violence and language. Running time: 92 minutes; in Arabic and Hebrew, with subtitles.

Review: 'Parthenope' bursts with sensual beauty — including from its star, Celeste Della Porto — but without a lot of coherence

Paolo Sorrentino makes movies that’s are extravaganzas of sensual pleasure, just as a cow eats grass — it’s just what they do.

Sorrentino’s latest movie, “Parthenope,” has sensuality bursting from every frame — and in most of those frames, it’s coming from the beautiful actress in the title role, Celeste Della Porta. What’s more elusive, as Della Porta sashays through Naples and leads every man she meets to distraction as Parthenope seeks her life’s purpose, is a coherent thread leading the viewer to any deeper understanding.

Born in the Neapolitan harbor, the adult Parthenope often finds herself by the shore, usually in a bikini. She’s the center of attention at every party at her parents’ seaside house, circa 1968. One of the old men (Alfonso Santagata) asks her, “If I were 40 years younger, would you marry me?,” and she seductively and smartly turns the question around: “If I were 40 years older, would you marry me?”

When Parthenope isn’t fending off leering old men, she actually befriends one — an alcoholic American author visiting Naples. The author, played charmingly by Gary Oldman, asks, “Are you aware of the destruction your beauty causes?” And it’s clear that she does. After a brief friendship, the author tells her she must find her own way. “I don’t want to steal one minute of your youth away from you,” he says.

In her teens and 20s, Parthenope is torn between two men — her melancholy brother, Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo), and Raimondo’s friend and her lover, Sandrino (Dario Alta). The choice she makes leads to a tragedy, and puts Parthenope on a different path.

Except for a flirtation with becoming an actress — when she meets a masked casting director (Isabella Ferrari) and a haughty film star (Luisa Ranieri) — Parthenope chooses academia. She studies anthropology, and finds a professor (Silvio Orlando) who takes her on as his protege. Along the way, there are flings with a brooding movie actor (Marlon Joubert) and a vain bishop (Peppe Lanzetta). 

Sorrentino — whose 2013 movie “The Great Beauty” won the international-film Oscar — reunites with that movie’s cinematographer, Daria D’Antonio, and the pairing is again fruitful. Everywhere D’Antonio points the camera, some bit of breathtaking beauty is to be found, particularly when it’s pointed at Della Porto.

And the young actress holds up her end of the bargain, finding inner depth in Parthenope behind her gorgeous eyes and below her sensuous curves. Alas, Sorrentino can’t bring it together into something more meaningful. In “Parthenope,” Sorrentino offers us only glimpses of the divine in his main character’s radiance.

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‘Parthenope’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and the Century Salt Lake 16 (South Salt Lake). Rated R for strong sexual content/graphic nudity, and language. Running time: 137 minutes; in Italian, with subtitles.

Review: 'The Unbreakable Boy,' though based on a true story about a boy with autism and his father's struggles, comes off as false and manipulative

There must be a way, in some alternate universe, to tell the story of Austin LeRette — a boy with brittle-bone disease and autism whose perpetually sunny disposition made him a beacon of hope and positivity to all around him — that doesn’t feel phony and maudlin.

That is not the way writer-director Jon Gunn tells Austin’s story in “The Unbreakable Boy,” a saccharine slog that can’t find its way toward genuine feeling, in spite of a winning performance by Jacob Laval.

Laval’s Austin narrates the story, which starts with Austin’s father, Scott — played by perpetual man-child Zachary Levi — getting drunk at a New Year’s Eve party and then attempting to drive home with Austin and his little brother, Logan (Gavin Warren) as passengers. Then the action flashes back 13 years and change, when Scott and his buddy Joe (Drew Powell) are shopping for clothes, and Scott eyes the pretty store clerk, Teresa (Meghann Fahy).

In the telling, we see Scott and Teresa on their first three dates — and that instead of a fourth date, Teresa informs Scott that she’s pregnant, and a quickly arranged wedding soon follows. We’re also told that Joe is Scott’s imaginary friend, his sounding board for talking through his problems.

Then Austin is born, and he has the same genetic condition Teresa does — osteogenesis imperfecta, or OI, or brittle-bone disease. The condition means Austin is prone to breaking bones (we’re told he broke two ribs when the obstetrician used forceps during his birth), so the LeRettes become familiar figures at the emergency room. 

The autism diagnosis comes later, and while some of Gunn’s script (adapted from Scott LeRette’s inspirational memoir, co-written by Susy Flory) depicts Austin’s eternal optimism, far more of the story is focused on Scott’s complaints about how unprepared he was to be a dad — not just of a kid who’s got a congenital condition and a neurodivergent issue, but of any kid. 

The story also shows, with plodding deliberation, Scott’s descent into alcoholism — and it feels like the filmmakers have pulled a bait-and-switch on the audience, promising a unique inspirational story and delivering a much more mundane one. 

Then, as Gunn completes the LeRettes’ story, Austin’s story becomes as mundane as any other story about a character who’s different from everyone else. In straining to find some syrupy moralizing about the lessons Scott learns from Austin, the movie neglects showing Austin as a complete human being.

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‘The Unbreakable Boy’

★1/2

Opens Friday, February 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong thematic material, alcohol abuse, language and some violence. Running time: 109 minutes.

Review: 'Paddington in Peru' is funny and whimsical, and nearly as good as its amazing predecessor

Perfection is such a rare commodity in movies that it’s easy to forgive “Paddington in Peru” for not being as good as its 2018 predecessor, “Paddington 2” — because the third movie in the series has plenty of charms and good humor in its own right.

This installment starts with big news for the kindly bear (voiced by Ben Whishaw), as he’s finally been given his British passport. Even though he’s now a true Englishbear, Paddington feels a bit homesick for Peru — particularly his aged Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton), who rescued young Paddington from a raging river and raised him like her own cub. 

As fate would have it, Paddington receives a letter from the Home for Retired Bears in Peru — not from Aunt Lucy, but from the Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman) who runs the place. The Reverend Mother informs Paddington that Aunt Lucy has gone missing, and none of the nuns can leave the home to find her in the Amazonian jungle. So Paddington and his English family, the Browns, fly to Lima to start the search.

For the Browns, the trip checks a lot of boxes. Henry (Hugh Bonneville), the insurance-selling patriarch, is under pressure from his new American boss (Hayley Atwell) to “embrace risk.” Mary (Emily Browning, replacing Sally Hawkins), Henry’s wife, is feeling the early pangs of “empty nest” syndrome, with older daughter Judy (Madeleine Harris) preparing to leave for college and son Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) self-exiled to his room and his labor-saving inventions. The kids’ grandmother, Mrs. Bird (Julie Walters), comes along for the ride.

That ride is taken up the Amazon on a rickety boat owned by a veteran river pilot, Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas), whose daughter, Gina (Carla Tous), is the engineer. Hunter harbors a secret, though — a fever, passed down from his ancestors (all played by Banderas), to find the mythical Eldorado, the city of gold. 

Director Dougal Wilson, whose resumé is in music videos, takes over from the wizardly Paul King and acquits himself well. (Having King and longtime writing partner Simon Farnaby take story credit undoubtedly helps.) The whimsical charm of this blue-coated bear with a marmalade fixation remains intact, and the movie takes time for some wonderfully absurd humor and a few sly movie references — everything from “The Sound of Music” to Buster Keaton’s “Steamboat Bill Jr.” Even the fan service at the movie’s mid-credit scene feels earned and happily offbeat.

Paddington remains a bear to be reckoned with, making his way through the world with kindness and resourcefulness — and knowing the value of a good hard stare to convince people to do the right thing. “Paddington in Peru” isn’t quite as wondrous as the first two installments, but it’s wonderful enough for these times.

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‘Paddington in Peru’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action, mild rude humor and some thematic elements. Running time: 106 minutes. 

Review: The Oscar-nominated short films are (mostly) wonderful, exploring crime, punishment, childhood, and whether someone is a robot

One of the best things about awards season is that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences reminds us in three of its Oscar categories that movies don’t have to be between 90 and 200 minutes long. 

The short-film categories — animation, live-action and documentary — consistently deliver fascinating views of the world, quick but deep dives into other cultures, and hard-hitting documentaries that don’t need a lot of time to make an impact.

• The slate of nominated animated films isn’t quite as strong as the other two this year, but there are two gems, both stories about childhood. The best two are both stories about childhood. One is Daisuke Nishio’s “Magic Candies,” a stop-motion work from Japan, shows a lonely boy who gets a bag of candies that have unusual properties — such as the ability to let him hear the thoughts of his sofa and his dog. The other is director Loïc Espuche’s cel-animated French coming-of-age story “Yuck!,” where children hanging out at a campground mock the adults who are kissing, until two of them decide they want to try it themselves.

Nearly as good is the wordless cel-animated “In the Shadow of the Cypress,” by Iranian directors Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani. It tells of a former sea captain and his long-suffering daughter, and what happens when a beached whale gives the captain a chance to atone for his past sins.

Two more stop-motion works round out the nominees, both of which include male figures nude from the waist down. “Wander to Wonder,” a Dutch-Belgian-French-British co-production rendered in English, is a bizarre tale that features tiny human figures from a long-forgotten children’s TV show fending off starvation. And “Beautiful Men,” director Nicolas Keppens’ Belgian-French-Dutch co-production, follows three brothers who have traveled to Istanbul for hair transplants; the movie is tenderly realized, but one wonders why it couldn’t have been done as live-action.

• The live-action nominees include two movies about children in developing countries trying to better their lives. 

Director Adam J. Graves’ film “Anuja” follows two sisters working in a clothing factory in New Delhi — with the older sister (Ananya Shanbhag) working to convince her math-wizard 9-year-old sibling (Sajda Pathan) to enroll in a boarding school to get away from the sweatshop life. The film, we learn at the end, is a public-service announcement for a charity that helps children in such situations — including, we’re told, the girl playing the title role.

In director Cindy Lee’s South African drama “The Last Ranger,” a girl, Litha (Liyabona Mroqoza), meets Khuselwa (Avumile Qongqo), who works on a game preserve trying to protect endangered rhinos from poachers. This lusciously shot film also ends with a PSA, this time for rhino protection. 

Injustice is at the heart of two chilling live-action shorts: “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent” tells the true story of an act of courage by a retired Croatian military officer during the 1990s’ ethnic cleansing of Bosnia; and in “A Lien,” brothers Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz depict a New Jersey family trying, during the first Trump administration, to get the Salvadoran-born husband (William Martinez) his green card — when he’s swept up in an ICE raid. (A title card tells us this practice, of ICE nabbing undocumented people while they’re trying to follow U.S. immigration rules, is as common as it is cruel.)

My favorite of the live-action slate is the one comedy of the bunch, writer-director Victoria Warmerdam’s “I’m Not a Robot,” in which a Dutch music producer (Ellen Parren) tries to log onto her computer and can’t get past the Captcha test — leading her to question whether she is, as her computer suggests, a robot.

• The longest program, and the best, consists of the five documentary short subject nominees, which are split between chronicles of musicians and explorations of violence and the justice system.

The musical docs cover both ends of the age spectrum. Director Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s “Instruments of a Beating Heart,” made for The New York Times’ Op-Docs series, goes inside a Tokyo elementary school school where the first-graders aim to end the year by learning to perform Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” for the incoming first-grade class — and feel the pressure to be perfect. In “The Only Girl in the Orchestra,” filmmaker Molly O’Brien profiles her aunt, double bassist Orin O’Brien, the first woman to be hired full-time to play in the New York Philharmonic and now approaching retirement.

Director Smriti Mundhra’s “I Am Ready, Warden,” made for MTV Documentary Films, captures the final week of existence for John Henry Ramirez, a Texas death row inmate; the movie also introduces us to the pastor working to save Ramirez’ life and the son of Ramirez’ victim, whose sure he wants Ramirez to die but isn’t sure his execution will bring closure.

In “Death By Numbers,” director Kim A. Snyder re-introduces us to Sam Fuentes, a young poet who writes regularly about the worst day of her life: Feb. 14, 2018, when 14 of her classmates and three adult staffers were shot dead at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Snyder, who followed the Parkland students in “Us Kids” (which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival), lets Fuentes’ dynamic words — both from her journals and in her defiant statement during the shooter’s sentencing hearing — do the talking.

The best of the bunch is director Bill Morrison’s “Incident,” made for The New Yorker. Using only footage from overhead surveillance, and police dash cams and body cams, Morrison dissects a 2018 police shooting in Chicago — as a cop’s questionable decision leads to a man’s death in the street, a confrontation starts to boil over in the neighborhood, and a narrative starts to form about what happened. It’s a compelling look into what we know and what we think we know, and how the two don’t always match.

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Oscar-nominated short films — animation

★★★

Opens Friday, February 14, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for for animated depictions of graphic nudity. Running time: 87 minutes; shorts are in French, Japanese and English, with subtitles where appropriate. 

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Oscar-nominated short films — live-action

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 14, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for for scenes of violence and language. Running time: 103 minutes; shorts are in English, Hindi, Dutch, Xhosa and Croatian, with subtitles where appropriate.

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Oscar-nominated short films — documentary

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for for violence and language. Running time: 163 minutes; four shorts are in English, one is in Japanese, with subtitles.

Review: A new Captain America, but familiar themes of political intrigue, in a satisfying 'Brave New World'

It’s a fascinating thread of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that of the four movies with “Captain America” in the title, the last three — including the new one, “Captain America: Brave New World” — play out as political thrillers in disguise. 

In “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” possibly the best MCU movie ever, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) learned that the evil Hydra had infiltrated the supposed good guys, S.H.I.E.L.D., all the way up to Nick Fury’s boss, Secretary Alexander Pierce (played by Robert Redford). “Captain America: Civil War” begins with plans by the Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt), to rein in superhero might — and ends with a Sokovian general (Daniel Brühl) manipulating things to set Avenger against Avenger.

With “Brave New World,” director Julius Onah (“Luce,” “The Cloverfield Paradox”) is dealing with a new Captain — Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson, inheriting the shield and the responsibility — and a new Thaddeus Ross, with Harrison Ford taking over from Hurt, who died in 2022. But those themes of politics and duplicity under the surface are as strong as ever.

The action starts immediately, with Sam taking part in a mission in Mexico. The assignment is to retrieve a canister stolen by a villain, Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), who’s being paid by an unseen buyer. Sam diverts from the canister to save some hostages and fight some ancillary baddies, and gets some airborne help from Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), an Air Force intelligence officer who’s training to be Falcon to Sam’s Cap. 

The heroics get Sam and Joaquin invited to the White House by Ross, who’s now the president. Sam is wary, considering his past run-ins with Ross, but Ross wants Sam to work on a new project: Bringing back the Avengers. 

Sam and Joaquin are also invited to a gala to celebrate a summit to negotiate a treaty over Celestial Island, a giant formation in the Indian Ocean (see Marvel’s “Eternals” for details) that has the richest deposits of a metal even more versatile and strong than vibranium — adamantium. (No Wolverines were harmed in the creation of this MacGuffin.) But the peace-loving vibe of the summit is shattered by an assassination attempt within the White House.

I’ve been skipping over a few details here, because the script that Onah and four other writers have cobbled together doesn’t benefit from too much advance information. Unfortunately, Marvel’s marketing geniuses think too much information — particularly about a certain crimson character — is the only way they’ll get butts in seats.

I will say several characters from past MCU titles make important appearances, such as Carl Lumbly’s Isaiah Bradley, a Steve Rogers-era super soldier who was featured with Mackie in the 2021 miniseries “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” There also are some references to the first time we saw Hurt’s Ross, in 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk,” notably the inclusion of Tim Blake Nelson in a key role. But the most interesting supporting character is a new one: President Ross’ short-but-potent security expert, Ruth Bat-Seraph, played by the Israeli actress Shira Haas. 

Through all the action — some of it quite exciting, some of it oversaturated with computer animation — two thoughtful threads emerge in “Captain America: Brave New World.” One is how Mackie’s Sam wrestles with the responsibility of carrying Cap’s shield, without benefit of super-serum. The other is the idea, at this moment in American history, that the most difficult thing a president has to control is himself.

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‘Captain America: Brave New World’

★★★

Opens Friday, February 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some strong language. Running time: 118 minutes.

Review: 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig,' made in secret in Iran, captures the corrosive paranoia of life under an authoritarian regime

Someday they’ll make a movie about how writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof made “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” — but it will have to be amazing to be as good as the movie he made, an examination of the corrosive effects of life in a totalitarian state, wrapped in a nail-biter of a suspense film.

The story goes that Rasoulof filmed in his home country, Iran, in secret — because the movie is concerned with the brutality of Iran’s enforcement of so-called “morality laws,” like women wearing head coverings, and the bloody 2022 crackdown on student protests against such laws. The film’s footage was smuggled out of Iran on thumb drives, reassembled in Germany. And Rasoulof himself was arrested for his dissent, sentenced to eight years in prison and a flogging. He managed to escape Iran, and appeared at Cannes two weeks later for his film’s premiere.

And, believe it or not, the story Rasoulof tells in the movie is even more compelling.

Iman (Missagh Zareh) has just landed a job as an investigating judge for Iran’s judiciary, looking into crimes against the state and the country’s strictly religious leadership. His colleague, Ghaderi (Reza Akhlaghirad), warns Iman that his life is going to change radically — because people who lose their cases in court may want to seek revenge against the court investigator. Ghaderi also gives Iman something to protect his family: A handgun.

Iman’s wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), isn’t thrilled about the gun, but she’s elated by Iman’s promotion, and the change in their social status that will come with it. Their teen daughters — Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), who’s a college student, and Sana (Setareh Maleki), a high-schooler — are less thrilled when Najmeh tells them they’ll have to rein in their social-media profile, because Iman’s new job means more scrutiny on the family.

Iman’s promotion happens just as a wave of student protests consumed Iran in fall of 2022. The catalyst was the death of Mahsa Amini, who died while in police custody — who was arrested for not wearing a hijab properly in public. Witnesses said Amini was beaten by police, something the police denied. According to one human rights group, more than 500 people died as the government cracked down on the protests.

Iman notices the protests only because his workload has increased, and he’s hearing more cases in which people have confessed to crimes — confessions, we later see for ourselves, that were often coerced. Rezvan and Sana experience the protests close up, particularly when they harbor one of Rezvan’s classmates, Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi), who has been wounded by police.

The movie shifts tone and setting, when Iman bundles Najmeh and their daughters into the car, and drive into the country. Iman’s hope of escaping the chaos in Tehran is threatened by his suspicion of his family — which has grown more intense since Iman misplaced his gun.

In “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Rasoulof uses the contours of a paranoid thriller, one that has the audience making fists of tension, to examine how life in Iran’s authoritarian regime — and, by extension, any authoritarian system — has rigged the game against its own people, relying on fear and distrust to do its work of making the people perpetually scared and submissive. It makes for riveting drama, and a timely lesson.

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‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’

★★★★

Opens Friday, February 7, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for disturbing violent content, bloody images, thematic content, some language and smoking. Running time: 167 minutes; in Persian with subtitles.