'Sunset'

In his follow-up to his 2015 Oscar-winning Holocaust drama “Son of Saul,” Hungarian director László Nemes takes viewers back to the early 20th century for “Sunset,” a compelling drama of royalty, riches and revolution.

It’s 1913, just before the Great War, and Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakub) arrives in a Budapest milliner, answering an ad for seamstresses and hat designers. She’s talented at both, and comes by it honestly: Her parents founded the milliner where she wants to work. But the current owner, Oszkár Brill (Vlad Ivanov), refuses to hire her, and even buys her a first-class ferry ticket out of Budapest, saying the big city will eat her alive.

Írisz is stubborn, though, and is determined to learn more about her parents, who died when she was 2 years old under suspicious circumstances. She becomes more determined when a man, a grizzled coachman named Gaspar (Levente Molnar), busts into her boarding room, blurting out something about her brother. Since Írisz didn’t know she had a brother, this news makes her even more determined to learn the truth.

Her path takes Írisz into the orbit of the Austro-Hungarian empire’s hat-buying royalty, a cabal of aristocrats, another cabal of revolutionaries led by the mysterious Sándor (Marcin Czarnik), and a strange ritual involving the milliner’s other seamstresses. She also crosses paths with Brill and his store manager, Zelma (Evelin Dobos), who are preparing for the store’s gala anniversary and want no interruptions of the big day.

Nemes and cinematographer Mátyás Erdély deploy the same filmmaking device they used in “Son of Saul,” of keeping the camera tightly yoked to the main character. The camera usually keeps Írisz tightly in the frame, either focusing on her delicate face or positioned just behind her swanlike neck to film the action as she’s seeing it.

There is plenty of action to see, with bustling city scenes and drum-tight suspense filling the corners of every frame in long, fluid takes. The plot, in a script by Nemes and co-writers Clara Roper and Mathieu Taponier, is dark and complex, but riveting when seen through Jakub’s wide, expressive eyes. “Sunset” takes Jakub’s Írisz on a dangerous ride, and the audience hangs on for the thrills.

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’Sunset’

★★★1/2

Opened March 22 in select cities; opens Friday, May 3, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for some violence. Running time: 142 minutes; in Hungarian with subtitles.

'Knife+Heart'

If Quentin Tarantino were a French auteur who wasn’t afraid of sex, he might have made director Yann Gonzalez’ freaky “Knife + Heart,” a campy and hyper-stylized homage to exploitation flicks.

It’s Paris, 1979, and Anne Parèze (played by the model and actress Vanessa Paradis) is close to the end of her rope. Her tempestuous relationship to Lois McKenna (Kate Moran), who is not only her girlfriend but the editor of the low-rent gay porn movies Anne directs, is falling apart. At the same time, one of her performers is brutally killed. And then another.

Gonzalez, who co-wrote with Cristiano Mangione, shows us the killer before anyone else sees him. He wears a black-leather mask, reminiscent of the Phantom of the Opera, and his weapon of choice is a dildo with a switchblade inside.

After being interrogated by condescending cops, Anne decides to turn tragedy into art. She starts making a new movie about a killer stalking porn actors — with her best friend and most flamboyant star, Archie (Nicolas Maury), in drag in Anne’s role. Meanwhile, her obsession with getting Lois back drives them even further apart.

Gonzalez dives deep into the French gay scene, when young men went for broke and nobody had heard of AIDS. The sex scenes are raw, but without showing genitalia so it’s just short of real porn. His cast, led by Paradis and Moran’s white-hot intensity, are game for anything Gonzalez throws at them, and the result is a crazy, captivating mess.

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‘Knife + Heart’

★★★

Opened March 15 in select cities; opens Friday, May 3, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for strong sexuality, strong violence, some drug use, and language. Running time: 102 minutes; in French, with subtitles.

'Her Smell'

Of the many movies about rock ’n’ roll excess, it’s hard to think of one that cuts to the bone the way writer-director Alex Ross Perry’s “Her Smell” does — thanks to Perry’s intimate storytelling and a tour de force performance by its star, Elisabeth Moss.

Moss plays Becky Something, lead singer and driving force of a ‘90s punk band, Something She. In the movie’s opening act, Becky’s bandmates, bassist Marielle Hell (Agyness Deyn) and drummer Ali van der Wolff (Gayle Rankin), are backstage pacing, worried that Becky is late for the gig, as usual.

When Becky arrives, she’s a ball of nervous energy, talking a mile a minute and chanting mantras from her in-house spiritual guru, Ya-ema (Eka Darville). Also in Becky’s wake is her ex-husband, Danny (Dan Stevens), who has brought their toddler daughter, Tama, because it’s Becky’s time for joint custody. Elsewhere backstage is another musician, Zelda E. Zekiel (Amber Heard), with whom Becky has a longstanding grudge.

Perry follows Becky closely through the warren of backstage rooms, with cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ handheld camera right up in her face. This goes on, nearly unbroken, for 25 minutes, chronicling a rock star at the height of her fame and about to crash.

The second act is the crash in progress. The band has set up shop in a recording studio, waiting for Becky to find her groove and start recording songs. The head of their record label, Howard (Eric Stoltz), is out of patience and time. While Becky is busy alienating Marielle and Ali to the point of quitting the band, she also tries to sink her claws into Howard’s new act, the Akergirls (played by Cara Delevingne, Ashley Benson and Dylan Gelula).

The second act, like the first, goes on for some 25 minutes or so, the camera constantly buzzing around Becky and the other characters, capturing a segment of Becky’s downward spiral.

The third, fourth and fifth act are structured similarly, in a small area in which Becky is the focus — even when other characters, like Becky’s mother (Virginia Madsen) and a 7-year-old Tama (Daisy Pugh-Weiss), enter the frame.

Perry kicks his filmmaking scope far above the navel-gazing indie films for which he was previously known, like “Listen Up Philip” and “Golden Exits.” This movie is daring, a high-stakes bet that he can sustain the nervous energy of each of the five acts for 25 uninterrupted minutes. The bet pays off, as the extended scenes force the actors to be as raw and as real as possible.

Among the supporting players, the absolute standout is Deyn, whose Marielle is the designated grown-up in Something She, trying to keep the fragile peace and eventually realizing when it’s time to hit the eject button on the fracturing band.

But “Her Smell” rises and falls — and spectacularly rises again — on the strength of Moss’ fearless performance. Moss channels a thousand hard-luck musical stories, and all the mythology of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll, into this one ferocious but ultimately vulnerable character. Whether screaming at her bandmates’ betrayal or tenderly trying to reconnect with her daughter, Moss makes every moment authentic and heartbreaking.

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‘Her Smell’ 

★★★★

Opened April 12 in select cities; opens Friday, April 26, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language throughout and some drug use. Running time: 134 minutes.

'Peterloo'

The British filmmaker Mike Leigh always digs into the humanity of any situation, whether a contemporary family drama (like his masterpiece “Secrets and Lies”) or a historical drama, like “Mr. Turner,” his 2014 biography of the painter J.M.W. Turner — or his newest film, “Peterloo,” an epic about a forgotten tragedy in the people’s history.

It’s 1819, and the Industrial Revolution has made some people rich and other people more destitute and desperate. The recent war against Napoleon has also left soldiers begging for scraps, though Parliament has made sure the soldiers’ leader, the Duke of Wellington, is set for life with a gift of 750,000 pounds.

Another war hero, Gen. Sir John Byng (Alastair Mackenzie), is back from fighting alongside Wellington, and the home secretary, Lord Sidmouth (Karl Johnson), gives him a new assignment: Go north to Manchester and Lancastershire, and tamp down the insurrection brewing against the mill owners.

The magistrates are doing what they can, by sending the poor to jail or Australia for the most minor offenses — and sending spies into the pubs and common places where rabble-rousers give speeches urging workers to go on strike. 

The culmination of this tension comes in St. Peter’s Field in Manchester on Aug. 18, 1819. Locals campaigning for voting rights, to ensure the working-class can vote for their representatives in the House of Commons, plan a peaceful rally, with the famed orator Henry Hunt (Rory Kinnear) on the hustings as the guest speaker. But the local yeomanry, a brutish constable (Victor McGuire), and the corrupt judges prodding Byng’s troops all lead to a massacre.

Leigh marshalls his actors like an army, and provides each with a role to play. He focuses on a typical Manchester family, striving to stay alive through poverty, with the matriarch, Nellie (Maxine Peake), cynical about the hopes for reform. On the other end of the economic spectrum, there’s the Prince Regent (Tim McInernney), foppishly fiddling with his fortune, until a potato thrown through his carriage window sets off a government panic.

Leigh presents too many characters to track, as he steadfastly refusing to dumb down the historical record. He bombards the audience with details, side characters, and small moments on the road to a major event. The narrative messiness becomes the point of “Peterloo,” showing how the sweep of history catches everyone, commoner or monarch, in the crush of progress.

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‘Peterloo’

★★★1/2

Opened April 5 in select cities; opens Friday, April 26, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for a sequence of violence and chaos. Running time: 154 minutes.

'Family'

There’s a touch of irony behind the generic title “Family,” but not enough to make up for the cookie-cutter plotting of this scattershot comedy.

The story is a familiar one: Overstressed corporate executive is suddenly drawn into a relative’s domestic life, and — after many failures as a surrogate parent — learns valuable lessons about the work-life balance thing. The twist is that the executive this time is a woman: Kate, played by Taylor Schilling (“Orange Is the New Black”), whose abrasive honesty makes her the most hated person in her office.

The office scenes are so generic that when Kate is preparing a pitch for the Parsons account, or whatever, it’s never specified whether this company does accounting, advertising or sells cleaning products. And, in the script by rookie writer-director Laura Steinel, it doesn’t much matter anyway.

Kate gets a call from her estranged brother Joe (Eric Edelstein), who needs help with a family matter. Joe and his wife, Cheryl (Allison Tolman), have to go move Cheryl’s dying mother to a hospice, and they need someone to watch their 11-year-old daughter Maddie (Bryn Vale) overnight. Kate, woefully unprepared as an aunt, reluctantly agrees.

Splitting her time between her New York job and the New Jersey suburbs, Kate becomes more frazzled than usual. At first, it’s small things, like her alpha housewife neighbor Jill (Kate McKinnon, unbilled and inadequately deployed) nagging her. 

Soon Kate finds Maddie is an eccentric girl. She skips on the ballet classes her mom sends her to, and instead hangs out next door at a karate studio, run by Sensei Pete (Bryan Tyree Henry). Maddie also hangs out with Dennis, aka Baby Joker (Fabrizio Zacharee Guido), a teen mini-mart employee who teaches Maddie the joys of being a juggalo, a fan of the hip-hop group Insane Clown Posse, who call their following a “family.” (Since the movie begins with Kate in clown makeup in a “you may wonder how I ended up like this” foreshadowing scene, the juggalo connection is clear from the first moments.)

With sharp comic performers like Tolman, Edelstein and Henry, there are laughs to be had, and Schilling’s “Orange Is the New Black” co-star Natasha Lyonne steals the show in a cameo as a Juggalette. And Schilling can deliver a one-liner better than most, and Steinel gives her plenty of sharp wisecracks.

The problem with “Family” is that Steinel’s premise is too cliche, and she chickens out on the acid humor as she writes up a safe happy ending. 

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‘Family’

★★1/2

Opened April 19 in select cities; opens Friday, April 26, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language, some sexual content and drug use. Running time: 86 minutes.

'Avengers: Endgame'

Yes, I’ve seen it. No, I’m not going to spoil anything.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Teen Spirit'

Music is a lifeline out of the doldrums of an English small town in “Teen Spirit,” an energetic rags-to-riches drama that spotlights its star, Elle Fanning, in surprising ways. 

The American-born Fanning plays Violet Valenski, a Polish-born teen living on the Isle of Wight. She goes to school, she waits tables at the bowling alley, and she feeds the goats on the small farm she and her mother, Maria (Agnieszka Grochowska), try to keep afloat. Sometimes she gets to take the stage at the local bar and sing, her one true passion in life.

Violet learns she has a fan, Vlad (Zlatko Buric), one of the drunks at the bar. When the national singing-competition show “Teen Spirit” comes to the Isle of Wight to audition singers, Violet wants to try. But, being 17, she needs an adult to approve. Rather than ask her mom, who would think it a waste of time, she asks Vlad to act a guardian. 

Vlad immediately assumes the role of manager, and gives her some tips on how to sing better. Vlad’s secret, we learn along the way, is that he was once a great opera star in Russia. Violet’s success would not only be her ticket to London, but also a bit of redemption for Vlad.

Actor Max Minghella — whose resume includes “The Social Network” and a recurring role on “The Handmaid’s Tale” — wrote the screenplay, which follows the contours of an up-from-nothing star-in-the-making drama with few surprises. But as a first-time director, Minghella shows some sparks of inspiration, particularly in the dynamic staging of the TV-ready musical numbers. (Minghella, by the way, is the son of the late director Anthony Minghella, known for “The English Patient” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” among others.)

The biggest surprise is that Fanning really sings as Violet, and she’s good at it. She’s got the pipes and, more importantly, the passion to turn covers of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” Ellie Goulding’s “Lights” and Sigrid’s “Don’t Kill My Vibe” into something fresh and propulsive. It’s Fanning’s music that gives “Teen Spirit” its intense fire.

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‘Teen Spirit’

★★★

Opens Friday, April 19, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content, and for teen drinking and smoking. Running time: 92 minutes.

'Little Woods'

There’s a certain kind of independent movie that has gone out of vogue, where familiar movie stars play people in poverty desperate for a way out. The success of this sort of movie depends on the authenticity of the specific details of the characters and their plight, and in the honesty the actors bring to those details.

Writer-director Nia DaCosta’s “Little Woods” captures the authenticity and the honesty, thanks to stars Tessa Thompson and Lily James, to create a quietly intense portrait of two sisters at the end of their ropes.

Thompson plays Ollie, who is just over a week away from finishing her parole, for the crime of smuggling meds illegally from Canada to her home town in North Dakota. Some of those meds were for her ailing mother, who has died before the events in DaCosta’s script begins. (The script also mentions Ollie was adopted.) What Ollie didn’t get caught doing was dealing other meds, specifically oxycodone, to the opioid-addicted oil-rig workers who are her neighbors.

James plays Ollie’s sister, Deb, who lives in a trailer with her 8-year-old son, Johnny (Charlie Ray Reid). Deb waits tables at the diner, and nags her irresponsible ex, Ian (James Badge Dale), for occasional child support. Deb has a new problem, though: Ian has gotten her pregnant again, and there’s no way she can afford to have a baby — or afford to travel the hundreds of miles to a clinic to have the pregnancy terminated.

With Ollie’s odd jobs, selling coffee and sandwiches to oil-rig workers, she can’t keep their mom’s house from facing foreclosure. It seems like her only option is to go back to smuggling drugs from Canada and selling them — which would jeopardize her parole, a job opportunity in far-away Spokane, and her safety when the area’s main drug boss, Bill (Luke Kirby), finds out.

DaCosta, who is slated to direct the revival of the “Candyman” horror franchise, digs deep into the desperate lives of these North Dakota strivers. She finds a rich vein of material in the hard relationship between the two sisters, and the difficulties they have faced as their mother’s health declined.

Credit Thompson and James for bringing out the tough emotions from these characters, as they argue over the past but bond together to fight for their future. Their performances, melded to DaCosta’s spare, economical writing and sharp direction, make “Little Woods” a memorable drama.

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‘Little Woods’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 19, at select theaters, including Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language and some drug material. Running time: 104 minutes.