Review: In 'F9,' director Justin Lin continues the 'Fast and the Furious' franchise's mission of throwing everything at the screen.

It’s appropriate that the latest in the action-movie franchise that started with “The Fast & The Furious” is called “F9” — since that’s the key on the laptop that makes everything show up on your screen at once.

With director Justin Lin — who directed installments three through six — back at the helm, “F9” aims to tie up loose ends from the franchise’s past, while adding a few new ones, and providing a backstory to Dominic Toretto’s family that we didn’t know we wanted. Mostly, though, it follows the pattern of most of the series: A bunch of cars going fast and doing things that defy comprehension, belief and several laws of physics.

The movie doesn’t start where the eighth film, “The Fate of the Furious,” left off — not at first. Instead, Lin and his co-writer, Daniel Casey, kick off in 1989, with Jack Toretto (J.D. Pardo, from “Mayans M.C.”) competing in a stock car race, with his two sons, Dom (Vinnie Bennett) and Jakob (Finn Cole), leading his pit crew. Jack gets killed in a fiery crash on the track, a moment that has serious repercussions for the Toretto family decades later.

Cut to decades later, with Dom (Vin Diesel) living a quiet life off the grid with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and his son, Little Brian (played by twins Isaac and Immanuel Holdane). That tranquility is broken when members of their old crew — driver Roman (Tyrese Gibson), tech genius Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and hacker queen Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) — show up with an intercepted emergency signal from their old spymaster friend, Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell).

The details are unimportant, but it gets Dom and Letty back in the game — and soon our crew is in some Central American country (but really they filmed this part in Thailand) tracking down some high-tech doohickey from Mr. Nobody’s crashed plane. A chase scene commences, and a shadowy figure gets away with the doohickey.

That figure, Dom and Letty realize immediately, is Dom’s estranged brother, Jakob, played by John Cena. This revelation opens up more flashbacks, to show how Dom and Jakob grew apart after their father’s death — with Dom going to prison for the first time and later exiling Jakob from the family, both for reasons that won’t be spoiled here.

The next part of the story sends the crew members in different directions. Dom, Tej, Roman and Ramsey go to London to track Jakob, while Letty and Mia (Jordana Brewster), Dom’s sister, go to Tokyo on the scent of their friend Han (Sung Kang), who was killed in both the third and sixth films. The fact that these sequences are happening simultaneously, and both happening at night on opposite sides of the world, is something time-zone nitpickers will just have to accept.

It’s interesting that Lin, who got to kill off Han in both the third movie (“The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”) and the sixth movie (“Fast & Furious 6”), is now given the chance to undo that cinematic death. If you’ve seen the trailers, you already know that Han is back from the dead — because this is a franchise that keeps a major character alive even after the actor who plays him dies. (Paul Walker may be gone, but Dom’s BFF Brian remains eternal.) 

Oh, Tej and Roman also come across Sean (Lucas Black), Twinkie (Shad Moss, the artist formerly known as Lil Bow Wow) and Earl (Jason Tobin) — three of the lead characters from “Tokyo Drift.” They’re in Germany playing with cars and rocket engines. Can’t imagine that this tidbit will become important later in the movie.

After a few minutes, and a gratuitous Helen Mirren walk-on, we learn that Jakob is enlisting the aid of the last movie’s supervillain, Cipher (Charlize Theron), and being bankrolled by Otto (Danish actor Thue Ersted Rasmussen), the Eurotrash son of some dictator. Among the things Otto’s Amex card is paying for is a very powerful electromagnet — which provides the rationale for some of the more outlandish stunts in the movie’s second half.

Lin sticks to the official reason for this franchise’s existence —the strength of family, whether it’s the still-tight bond between Dom and Jakob or the haphazard family of Dom’s crew, whom we have grown to love throughout the franchise. Between Dom’s dealings with Jakob, both in the present day and flashbacks, Lin leans in heavy to the melodrama. (He also manages to cast the younger Torettos with actors, Bennett and Cole, who look remarkably like computer-generated de-aged versions of Diesel and Cena.)

But Lin also plays true to the real reason this franchise has lasted for 20 years: Making cars go fast and everything around them go boom, whether it all makes sense or not. Lin throws everything up on the screen, gleefully overloading on action, stunts and special effects — in other words, the things that make us want to see movies in big theaters, rather than home on our TV screens.

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‘F9’

★★★

Opens Friday, June 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and language. Running time: 145 minutes.

Review: 'The Sparks Brothers' showcases the pioneering pop band over 50 years of clips and interviews with some famous fans

It’s possible that no brothers have been so musically talented and consistently cool for 50-plus years, without the mainstream success that usually comes with such longevity, as Ron and Russell Mael, the duo that make up the band Sparks.

The Maels sit down for the definitive career-spanning documentary in “The Sparks Brothers,” in which director Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”) makes a strong case for why Sparks is the band that other musicians always talk about.

Growing up in the Los Angeles area — and not the UK, which many people assume — the Maels grew up on early rock ’n’ roll, from Bill Haley and the Comets on to Elvis, Little Richard and James Brown. They also grew up on Saturday matinees, cartoons and newsreels, back when you came in during the middle of the movie and stayed until it looped around again. Ron Mael says this may explain their jagged narrative style.

After their father died when Ron was 11 and Russ was 8, the brothers relied on each other to guard against the cruel world. Ron took piano lessons, and Russ became a jock — and they both thrived on the pop music of Los Angeles AM radio of the ‘60s. Mom even drove them to Vegas in their teens to see The Beatles.

After forming a few bands in college, they started Sparks in 1967, with Russell as the handsome frontman (he modeled himself after Mick Jagger and Roger Daltrey, maybe with Marc Bolan of T. Rex thrown in) and Ron as the mad scientist at the keyboard. Most record-company scouts didn’t get what Sparks was doing, but the band’s manager got a demo tape to rocker Todd Rundgren, who urged his label to sign them immediately. Rundgren talks about his love of the band, and bears no grudge that his girlfriend at the time went on to date Russell Mael.

For a time, Ron sported a mustache that was somewhere between Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler. Wright shows, through animation, a possibly apocryphal moment when Sparks appeared on the BBC’s “Top of the Pops,” and John Lennon rang up Ringo Starr and said, “There’s Marc Bolan playing with Hitler.” (Wright enlisted his mates, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, to perform the voices of John and Ringo.)

Wright devotes time to nearly all of Sparks’ 25 albums over the last half-century, so there are moments when the audience feels it’s being held captive by an overly obsessive Sparks completist — which we are, kind of. But Wright has lots of company, based on the many interviews with famous musicians who note the debt to owe to Sparks. Vince Clarke of Erasure jokes that he, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran (who’s in the movie) and Chris Lowe of Pet Shop boys all copy Ron Mael’s morose stance behind the keyboards. Meanwhile, The Go-Go’s Jane Wiedlin (who dueted with Russell Mael on Sparks’ 1983 hit “Cool Places”) and Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand (who formed a supergroup with Sparks, called FFS, in 2015) both marvel at the fun of collaborating with their favorite band.

There’s plenty of footage of Sparks in performance; they appeared often on “American Bandstand” and many similar shows in Europe — and they went through an MTV phase, as everyone did in the ‘80s.

Wright’s thesis is that Sparks was ahead of every pop trend from the ‘70s through the ‘90s — from synthesizers to dance moves later appropriated by Molly Ringwald — but never stayed in one lane long enough to reap the financial rewards of their pioneering music. But when you see Ron and Russell Mael now, still making music their own way in their 70s, it’s hard to say they weren’t successful. 

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‘The Sparks Brothers’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, June 18, at Century 16 (South Salt Lake), Cinemark 24 Jordan Landing (West Valley City), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan), Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi), and Cinemark 16 (Provo). Rated R for language. Running time: 140 minutes.

Review: Documentary gives Rita Moreno, EGOT-winning icon and Hollywood survivor, the profile she's always deserved

A filmmaker would have to go out of their way to botch a documentary about someone as lively, and with as long and as storied a career, as Rita Moreno.

Thankfully, director Mariem Pérez Riera does a beautiful job of profiling the 89-year-old Hollywood legend and survivor, mostly by letting Moreno herself do the majority of the talking.

Moreno is game to talk about a lot of her life: Her childhood in Puerto Rico during the Depression, moving with her mother to New York when she was 5, becoming a performer, dressing up like Elizabeth Taylor to impress Louis B. Mayer and get her first studio contract. And that’s just the beginning.

Moreno talks candidly about being typecast in “native girl” roles, wearing “makeup the color of mud” to play Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and, in “The King and I,” a Thai maiden. She also talks about the leering, harassment and abuse at the hands of the men who ran Hollywood, including being raped by her own agent.

Through all the bad material, there were some gems: Roles in ‘Singin’ in the Rain” (as the flashy flapper Zelda) and her Oscar-winning performance in Anita in “West Side Story.” Pérez Riera interviews scholars and many famous names — including Eva Longoria, Gloria Estefan and Lin-Manuel Miranda — to dissect the cultural significance of Anita, and Moreno’s surprise Oscar win for the role. 

Moreno also talks candidly about her tempestuous relationship with Marlon Brando, and several tragedies that accompanied it. And she talks about how, after her Oscar win, she turned down the “native girl” roles and ended up not making another movie for seven years. Instead, she went to Broadway, winning a Tony for Terrence McNally’s “The Ritz.” She also worked on the children’s TV series “The Electric Company” (the album for which got her a Grammy), and a classic appearance on “The Muppet Show,” for which she won her first Emmy — completing her EGOT trophy case.

Moreno has never stopped working, though it seems like every 20 years, she lands a “comeback” role — as a nun counseling inmates on “Oz” in the ‘90s, and most recently as the flamboyant grandma on the reboot of “One Day at a Time.” 

(Update: It speaks to Moreno’s longevity, and her importance as a trailblazer, that she can still court controversy — as she did this week when she appeared on “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and defended Miranda over complaints that the movie of his musical “in the Heights” didn’t show enough representation of the Afro-Latinx community. Moreno followed up the next day by tweeting that “I’m incredibly disappointed with myself” for being “clearly dismissive of Black lives that matter in our Latin community.” Moreno then praised Miranda’s “sensitivity and resolve to be more inclusive of the Afro-Latino community going forward,” and added, “see, you CAN teach this old dog new tricks.”)

Pérez Riera (whose son played the teen grandson on “One Day at a Time”) assembles a raft of movie clips and archival footage, as well as interviews with friends, colleagues and historians who put the work into context. But the strength of the film is Moreno herself, who in her 80s is still the attention seeker and truth teller she says she’s been since she was a little girl.

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‘Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 18, at Century 16 (South Salt Lake) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, some strong language including a sexual reference, and suggestive material. Running time: 90 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 31, 2021, when the film premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: Inspirational football drama '12 Mighty Orphans' loads on the cliches as it plucks the heart strings

Sports stories don’t come more ready-made for a heart-tugging movie than the Mighty Mites, a scrappy orphanage team that was the underdog story of Depression-era Texas — and director Ty Roberts delivers the melodrama in buckets.

It’s 1938, at the height of the Great Depression, when Rusty Russell (Luke Wilson) arrives at the Masonic Hall orphanage, with his wife Juanita (Vinessa Shaw) and their daughters in tow. Rusty has been hired as a math teacher and football coach for the teen boys living there, while Juanita is assigned to tutor the girls.

Rusty discovers the boys are stigmatized because they’re orphaned, and exploited for their labor by another teacher, Frank Wynn (Wayne Knight). Rusty enlists the orphanage’s kindly but often inebriated medic, Doc Hall (Martin Sheen), as an assistant coach to teach the boys the sport — and draws up some innovative plays, such as the “spread” offense, to capitalize on the boys’ speed and neutralize the other teams’ size. More importantly, though, Rusty — once an orphan himself — teaches the boys to rely on each other, to believe in themselves.

Roberts, who wrote the screenplay with Lane Garrison (who plays a flamboyant rival coach) and Kevin Meyer, bathes the film in a nostalgic sepia-tone glow, through game and training montages that check all the boxes of the sports-movie cliche list. Heck, he even throws in a rousing courtroom scene, when Rusty must argue to keep the state’s sports authority from revoking the Mites’ league membership.

There are some curious embellishments, like a cameo by Robert Duvall, comedian Ron White as the local sheriff, a turn by Treat Williams as a prominent sportswriter, and even scenes involving Franklin Roosevelt (Larry Pine), following the team’s exploits from afar. But when “12 Mighty Orphans” is grounded in the lives of its boys — most notably the stubborn Hardy Brown (Jake Austin Walker) — the movie’s determined plucking of the heart strings somehow strikes a chord.

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’12 Mighty Orphans’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 18, at the Cinemark 24 Jordan Landing (West Jordan), Megaplex Theatres at The District (South Jordan), Megaplex Legacy Crossing (Centerville), Megaplex at The Junction (Ogden), Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi), Megaplex Geneva (Vineyard), Scera (Orem), Coral Cliffs Cinema (Hurricane) and Sunset Stadium 8 (St. George). Rated PG-13 for violence, language, some suggestive references, smoking and brief teen drinking. Running time: 118 minutes. 

Review: 'Luca' is Pixar, Italian style — plenty of craftsmanship, in service to a moving story about childhood on the Riviera

Pixar Animation Studios’ latest little jar of wonder, “Luca,” lives on the cusp of many things: Between childhood and adolescence, between reality and fantasy, and between an Italian seaside village and the aquatic denizens who live figuratively right next door.

Luca, voiced by “Room” star Jacob Tremblay, is a kid with a great curiosity for what’s beyond the limits of where his protective mother, Daniela (voiced by Maya Rudolph), lets him go. What’s different is that Luca, Daniela and his dad, Lorenzo (voiced by Jim Gaffigan), are sea creatures — what the folks in the surface world insultingly call “sea monsters.”

The surface world is where Daniela has told Luca not to go — and when he gets a bit too curious, Mom is ready to have Luca live in the depths with his angler fish uncle, Ugo (voiced, in a brief but hilarious turn, by Sacha Baron Cohen). Fearful of that fate, Luca runs away (swims away?) to the surface.

Quickly, Luca befriends Alberto (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer), another sea creature who has been living on the surface for awhile. Alberto teaches Luca what he knows about humans, much of which is ridiculously wrong. Soon, Luca and Alberto — whose scaly sea-creature appearance transforms to human skin tones when they’re dry — venture into the village, ever worried that a slip-up or a water splash will reveal their identities to the fearful humans. The boys’ goal is to own a Vespa, which they come to believe is the universal symbol of freedom and adventure.

The plot gets complicated when the boys befriend Giulia (voiced by Emma Berman), a village girl who corrals Luca and Alberto into helping her win the town’s annual junior triathlon — whose three events are swimming, eating pasta and bicycling — and defeat the local bully, Ercole (voiced by Saverio Raimondo).

Director Enrico Casarosa has worked his way up the ranks of Pixar, as a storyboard artist on “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “Coco,” and directing the 2011 short “La Luna.” He’s also a native of Genoa, so the gorgeous depiction of the sun-dappled Italian Riviera, and the sly references to countless Italian movies (including a Marcello Mastroianni Easter egg), come quite naturally.

On the technical side, the Pixar wizards again perform brilliantly — notably in the characters’ quick-fire transitions from sea creature to human and back, which fly by so fast that one might not appreciate their complexity. 

But beyond the craftsmanship, “Luca” is a story about two boys bonding as friends, then seeing those bonds strained by the emotional tug-of-war of growing up. Once again, Pixar strikes that balance between what’s funny, what’s awe-inspiring, and what’s tender and relatable.

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‘Luca’

★★★1/2

Available starting Friday, June 18, streaming on Disney+. Rated PG for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence. Running time: 95 minutes.

Review: 'Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard' is a routine action comedy where everyone seems bored — except for Salma Hayek, who gives a smart comic performance.

In these last 15 months, as we’ve locked ourselves in our homes, done our work and school via Zoom calls, worn masks and lined up to be vaccinated, I’d bet there isn’t a soul who said, “This will all be worth it to watch Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson trade insults for 99 minutes.”

If anyone did say that, “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” is going to be a major letdown.

Reynolds and Jackson are back, reprising their roles from their 2017 action buddy comedy “The Hitman’s Bodyguard.” Reynolds played Michael Bryce, the one-time “executive protection agent” whose life was upended when he was forced to partner with the guy he was usually working against, paid assassin Darius Kincaid, Jackson’s character.

We find Bryce trying to cope with life without bodyguard work, as he annoys his therapist until she suggests he take a sabbatical from all forms of gunplay and violence. No sooner does he land at a vacation resort than he’s pulled back into his old life with Sonia Kincaid (Salma Hayek), Darius’ tempestuous wife, forces Bryce to help her rescue Darius from some nasty Mafia killers.

Bryne and Sonia rescue Kincaid, who’s not thrilled to see his old frenemy Bryce on the scene. But soon the trio are pressed into service by Bobby O’Neill (Frank Grillo), a Boston cop on loan to Interpol, who’s trying to stop a data breach that will cripple all of Europe — a crime being set up by a Greek tycoon bent on restoring his country to the top of the world’s influencers for the first time since Socrates took hemlock.

The villain here, though Greek, is played by the Spanish-born actor Antonio Banderas — which means we’re getting a reunion of the screen pairing behind two-thirds of Robert Rodriguez’ “El Mariachi” trilogy, “Desperado” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico.” This thought becomes noteworthy because viewers may find themselves asking, “Why didn’t I stay home and watch those movies?”

No, instead we get director Patrick Hughes, back from the first movie, running through generic sequences of stunts and shootouts, interrupted by the ostensibly comical bickering among Bryce and the Kincaids. But neither Reynolds nor Jackson seem to have their hearts in it.

The one star who acts like she’s having any fun is Hayek, who puts a great comic spin on Sonia’s ferocious violent streak and her rather manic quest to become a mother. Hayek’s performance in “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” is a reminder of what a deft comedian she can be — even in a movie where those gifts aren’t appreciated.

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‘The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard’

★★

Opening Wednesday, June 16, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language, and some sexual content. Running time: 99 minutes.

Review: 'In the Heights' brings Broadway to the streets, with a joyful look at a vibrant New York neighborhood

Just when we needed it most, as the country starts to emerge from virus-inflicted isolation and wanting to have fun, playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda and director Jon M. Chu bring the party with the long-awaited movie version of “In the Heights.”

Miranda’s debut musical, first staged off-Broadway in 2007 and debuting on Broadway in 2008, is a rhythm-driven, joy-filled celebration of Washington Heights. For those who don’t know — and Miranda & Co. are eager to tell you — that’s the neighborhood in far northern Manhattan where first- and second-generation immigrants toil and strive to make better lives for themselves.

The narrator is Usnavi de la Vega, played by Anthony Ramos, who’s best known for playing two doomed characters — John Laurens and Philip Hamilton — in Miranda’s “Hamilton.” Usnavi’s parents brought him to “Nueva York” from the Dominican Republic. It’s Usnavi’s dream to leave behind his dad’s run-down bodega, where he sells coffee and lottery tickets to the neighborhood, and reopen the bar his dad used to run in Santo Domingo.

But there’s more than money woes keeping Usnavi from going back to the Dominican Republic. There’s his young cousin Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV), a DACA kid who runs the store with him. And there’s Claudia (Olga Merediz), who raised Usnavi after his parents died — and serves as “abuela,” or grandmother, to the neighborhood. But, mostly, Usnavi is tied by his unrequited crush on Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), a fashion designer who also dreams of leaving Washington Heights — in her case, for an apartment downtown.

The story’s other romantic coupling is between Nina Rosario (Leslie Grace), who’s back from her first year at Stanford, and Benny (Corey Hawkins), the dispatcher at the taxi company owned by Nina’s dad, Kevin Rosario (Jimmy Smits). Nina is dealing with the pressure of being Kevin’s perfect daughter, and being the one person everyone knows who escaped the Heights — which is why she’s having trouble telling everyone that she wants to drop out of Stanford, where she feels alienated and alone.

Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes, who wrote the musical’s book and the film’s screenplay, mostly make space for the characters to sing about their hardships and dreams. What little plot there is involves a blackout, the miscommunication between Usnavi and Vanessa (easily the musical’s weakest link), and the word spreading around the neighborhood that Usnavi’s bodega sold somebody a winning lottery ticket worth $96,000.

Fans of the play will notice some changes. The film removes the subplot where Kevin disapproves of Benny dating his daughter; in fact, the movie also takes away Kevin’s big solo number and makes him a widower. Merediz’ show-stopper “Paciencia y Fe,” in which Abuela Claudia sings of her passage from Cuba and her family’s hard work in New York, is moved into the second act.

Merediz, who received a Tony nomination for the role, is the only Broadway cast member who reprises her role for the movie. Miranda played Usnavi back in 2008, but has aged out. Now he plays the Piragueno, the shaved-ice man, selling his sweet treats around the block — and serving as the symbol of the Heights’ resistance to gentrification, personified by the corporate-backed Mister Softee truck. (The Mister Softee driver is played by Christopher Jackson, who was the original Benny and later played George Washington in “Hamilton.”)

“In the Heights” is part of a long Broadway tradition: Enticing rich theatergoers to plunk down hundreds of dollars for tickets to watch poor people persevere. It’s a tradition that stretches from “Oliver!” to “Fiddler on the Roof,” from “Les Miserables” to “Miss Saigon,” and from “Rent” to “Urinetown.”

Miranda’s debut musical doesn’t wallow too much in the historic nostalgia of “Fiddler,” or the operatic self-importance of “Les Miz,” or the smug sanctimony of “Rent.” No, “In the Heights” is a big-hearted work — weaving together stories of hope holding firm in the face of disappointment, love winning out over adversity — that also tackles issues of poverty, immigration and the preservation of Latino culture.

And in the hands of Chu, who directed “Crazy Rich Asians” and a couple of the “Step Up” movies, it’s the sort of musical spectacle — fast-moving, dance-focused, candy-colored — that Miranda’s music deserves. The fact that much of it is filmed on location gives the movie magic an underpinning of street-smart authenticity.

Chu sets the ensemble piece “96,000,” when everyone considers what they would do with a lottery windfall, at the public pool in a throwback to Busby Berkeley’s watery extravaganzas with Esther Williams. He smartly casts Daphne Rubin-Vega (the original Mimi from “Rent”) in the key role of Daniela, the exuberant owner of the local hair salon. And in Benny and Nina’s duet “When the Sun Goes Down,” he stages the dance on the side of their building, reminiscent of Fred Astaire in “Royal Wedding.”

Ramos gives a star turn as Usnavi, caught between his New York life and his Dominican dreams. Barrera is a charming discovery as the ambitious Vanessa, and Hawkins and Grace bring soul to Benny and Nina’s love story. Smits and especially Merediz shine as they show that pursuing one’s dreams is a multi-generational occupation.

Throughout “In the Heights,” one hears Miranda’s way of melding traditional musical theater and the rhythms of hip-hop, the Caribbean and the New York street. As he did in “Hamilton,” Miranda here is  bending the musical to fit the moment, creating something both timely and timeless.

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‘In the Heights’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 11, in theaters and streaming on HBO Max. Rated PG-13 for some language and suggestive references. Running time: 143 minutes.

Review: 'Censor' is a smart and scary horror tale that also comments on the 'video nasties' panic of the '80s.

The smartly spooky Welsh-made shocker “Censor” shows that it’s possible to comment on the horror genre while still making a movie that will scare the crap out of you.

It’s the early ‘80s in Great Britain, in the era of Margaret Thatcher, and Enid Baines (played by Irish actress Niamh Algar) works for the government agency that censors and rates movies. It’s the age of “video nasties,” cheaply made horror whose gore is so abundant that it’s set off a moral panic in the tabloid press — and when an accused killer is linked to a movie Enid and her colleagues approved, the press hordes start hounding her.

Then a new horror movie comes in for screening, and it’s disturbing to Enid in ways beyond the usual guts and gore. Enid becomes convinced that the lead actress (Sophia La Porta) is the adult version of Enid’s sister, Nina, who disappeared when she was 7 years old — when a 10-year-old Enid was with her. When Enid can’t convince her parents, who have taken steps to have Nina declared legally dead, Enid decides she has to find the film’s enigmatic director (Adrian Schiller), who is now filming another movie that eerily parallels Nina’s disappearance.

In her feature debut, director/co-writer Prano Bailey-Bond (who wrote the script with Anthony Fletcher) finds delicious tension in following the straitlaced Enid descend into madness and mayhem. It helps that Algar, last seen by American audiences in Guy Ritchie’s recent heist thriller “Wrath of Man,” is so compelling to watch as Enid slowly unravels.

Interestingly, for a movie that delves into “video nasties,” the gore is judiciously applied — except for an early montage of ‘80s-style splatter films and a fairly gruesome finale. Bailey-Bond proves that what we think is happening on the screen is infinitely more terrifying than onscreen bloodshed, and allows the scariest parts of the movie to play out within the viewer’s head. 

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‘Censor’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 11, in select theaters; on demand June 18. Not rated, but probably R for violence, gore, sexual situations and language. Running time: 84 minutes.