Review: 'Polite Society' mixes sisterly drama with martial-arts comedy for a brilliant wedding satire

Here are two genres I would never have thought to combine: A sisterly wedding jealousy drama and a raucous martial-arts comedy. But writer-director Nida Manzoor melds the two with hilarious and heart-warming results in “Polite Society.”

Ria Khan (Priya Kansara), at 17, has dreams of becoming a stuntwoman. She records YouTube videos of her practice sessions, but she’s yet to master the flying spin kick done by her role model, real-live stuntwoman Eunice Huthart (who doubled for Angelina Jolie on “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and “Salt”).

It’s hard to get her teachers, or her proper Pakistani parents, to take Ria’s stunt aspirations seriously — and her moves sometimes get her harassed by her school bully, Kovacs (Shona Babayemi). The one person who does believe in Ria is her older sister, Lena (Ritu Arya), an art-school dropout who’s been depressed lately about her lack of career success.

When their mom (Show Kapoor) takes the sisters to an Eid party thrown by the wealthy Shah family, it’s clear that the event is an effort to match up the Shah’s geneticist son, Salim (Akshay Khan), with a potential bride. Then Lena starts dating Salim, and Ria becomes suspicious of Salim and his imperious mother, Raheela (Nimra Bucha). When Lena and Salim get engaged, Ria decides it’s her mission to stop the wedding — using her martial-arts skills and the help of her school chums, Clara (Seraphina Beh) and Alba (Ella Bruccoleri).

Manzoor — who created the Peacock series “We Are Lady Parts,” about an all-female Muslim punk band — gets quite specific about the rituals and other details of England’s Pakistani immigrant community. But that doesn’t matter, because overbearing mothers of the groom and jealous sisters of the bride are universal constants. Manzoor deftly works the gap between heartfelt sisterly conflict and comedic high-kicking action, and it’s to the movie’s credit that you never know exactly how seriously to take what’s happening.

The lead performers are a delight. Arya, who’s familiar to fans of “The Umbrella Academy,” is charming as Lena, getting swept off her feet by the handsome Salim. And Kansara (who appeared in two episodes of “Bridgerton”) is a real discovery, a bundle of energy who delivers one-liners and karate kicks with equal power.

It’s easy to want to overpraise “Polite Society,” because of Kansara and Arya’s chemistry and the audacity of Manzoor’s storytelling. But I think it earns a place next to John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China” and Jackie Chan’s “The Legend of Drunken Master” as masterful blends of comedy and martial arts.

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‘Polite Society’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 28, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for strong language, violence, sexual material, and some partial nudity. Running time: 103 minutes.

Review: 'Showing Up' is a dry comedy about artists who stress themselves out in the name of making art

Anyone who knows an artist is going to identify greatly with the characters in writer-director Kelly Reichert’s latest movie, “Showing Up” — a sly comedy about the self-assigned hell that is the act of creation.

Michelle Williams stars as Lizzy, a sculptor living in Portland, Ore., and a week or so away from her next gallery show. So, naturally, she’s a bit of a wreck. Her biggest problem is that there’s no hot water in her apartment, and her landlady, Jo (Hong Chau), another sculptor, also has an exhibition coming up, and hasn’t had time to get the water heater fixed.

One night, Lizzy hears some noise in her bathroom, and discovers that her cat has attacked a pigeon that got inside. Lizzy tries to dispose of the injured bird with a broom and dustpan, dumping it out her window — only to learn the next morning that Jo found the pigeon and is nursing it back to health. The fact that Lizzy ends up babysitting the bird becomes a running gag in the movie.

As Lizzy labors to shape her sculptures, glaze them and get them in the kiln, Reichert and her writing partner Jonathan Raymond introduce us to her wider circle. There’s her mom, Jean (Maryann Plunkett), who runs the local art college, which is always a beehive of creative energy. We meet her dad, Bill (Judd Hirsch), a potter who has a random couple (played by Amanda Plummer and Matt Malloy) hanging out in his house. And, importantly, there’s her younger brother Sean (John Magaro), who is dealing with some big issues. (It’s never stated, but the suggestion is that Sean is on the autism spectrum.)

But the central relationship in “Showing Up” is between Lizzy and Jo, whose contrasting personalities — Lizzy is closed off and tightly wound, Jo is free-spirited and outgoing — are reflected in their art. Lizzy’s clay figures (made by Portland artist Cynthia Lahti) are small and detailed, while Jo’s fiber works (created by New York-based artist Michelle Segre) fill whole rooms and are bursting with color. 

Williams and Chau give a pair of perfectly meshed performances, playing two friends who respect each other’s process while sometimes getting frustrated at the other — and themselves, to be honest — for putting art before everything else. There’s never envy or competitiveness, though, because their styles are so different. It’s refreshing to watch a movie that centers on such a grown-up, intelligent relationship between female friends.

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‘Showing Up’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for brief graphic nudity. Running time: 107 minutes.

Review: 'Peter Pan & Wendy' takes Disney's 1953 animated tale as a jumping-off point for an engaging, and different, adventure

Give this to director David Lowery: When he makes a live-action version of an animated Disney movie — as he did with “Pete’s Dragon” in 2016 and does with the new “Peter Pan & Wendy” — he isn’t a slave to the original.

Lowery and his writing partner on both Disney adaptations, Toby Halbrooks, start with the familiar story of J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play: The Darling siblings — older sister Wendy (Ever Anderson), and brothers John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi June) — are playing in their nursery, when a boy shows up through their window. This is Peter Pan (Alexander Molony), the figure of their bedtime stories, a boy who never grows up, and flies with the aid of a fairy, Tinker Bell (played by Yara Shahidi), and her pixie dust.

Peter invites the Darling children to go with him to Neverland, where they can play all day and night, and never have to grow up. For Wendy — who, at 15, has been told by her parents (Alan Tudyk and Molly Parker) that she will be sent to boarding school to become a proper lady — the prospect of not having to grow up is mighty appealing. So soon, the three of them are following Peter’s directions, “second star to the right and straight on ’til morning,” and are flying, thanks to that pixie dust and happy thoughts.

It’s here where animation fans will notice that Lowery has left the marked path. Mrs. Darling sings a lullaby, but it’s not a song from Disney’s 1953 version. In fact, the only music from the ’53 is a brief melody of “You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!” referenced in Daniel Hart’s score when Wendy first goes airborne.

Soon they arrive at Neverland, which is also different from the 1953 version. The Lost Boys now include girls, for starters. And Tiger Lily isn’t depicted as an offensive Native American stereotype, but an authentic-looking Indigenous character (played by Alyssa Wapanatâhk, who is Bigstone Cree First Nation from Canada).

There are still pirates in Neverland, and Peter is more than ready to resume his feud with the nastiest pirate of them all: Captain James Hook (Jude Law). But even that relationship has some twists to it.

The other important upgrade is the movie’s focus on Wendy. She’s no mere damsel in distress, but probably the most pivotal role — because the whole story revolves around her choice of whether to keep enjoying adventures in Neverland or go back to London to start an extraordinary life as an adult. (Anyone who accuses Disney of serving up a “woke” version of “Peter Pan” doesn’t know the character’s history: The title of Barrie’s 1911 novel, based on the 1904 play, was “Peter and Wendy.”)

Young Anderson is a joy to watch as Wendy, capturing the character’s sense of wonder and her growing understanding of what it means to grow up. By the way, Anderson, who is 15 like her character, is the daughter of director Paul W.S. Anderson and actor Milla Jovovich (“The Fifth Element,” “Resident Evil”), and her resemblance to her mother is remarkable.

Lowery doesn’t give us what we think we want in “Peter Pan & Wendy,” like the live-action takes on “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King” did. Instead he gives us something to think about — a variation on a classic story with room to explore and experiment. Not everything comes together perfectly, but it remains (to borrow Peter’s description of death) an awfully big adventure.

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‘Peter Pan & Wendy’

★★★

Starts streaming Friday, April 28, on Disney+. Rated PG for violence, peril and thematic elements.  Running time: 106 minutes.

Review: 'Chevalier' has a lot to say, about race and class and talent, under its fancy French costumes.

In “Chevalier,” a juicy romance and a civil rights lesson are disguised as a flouncy historical period drama, and show there’s a lot more going on under those powdered wigs than you realize.

Kelvin Harrison Jr. stars in this “based on a true story” drama, as composer Joseph Bologne, a man of African heritage who in the late 1700s impresses the French aristocracy with his musical prowess — in the opening sequence, he challenges no less a figure than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Joseph Prowen) to a violin contest, and wins.

Bologne, we’re shown in flashbacks, was the illegitimate son of a nobleman who abandoned him in a French academy, where to survive he learned to be the best violinist and best swordsman in the school. His success leads no less a figure than Marie Antoinette, then the queen of France (and played by Lucy Boynton), to name him her champion — with the title Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

Bologne becomes the toast of French society, even after learning that the father who abandoned him has died and left him with none of his fortune. What the father did leave is Bologne’s mother, Nanon (Ronke Adekoluejo), now freed from slavery. Nanon comes to Paris to live with her son, and she starts keeping house and keeping his secrets.

So sure of his musical abilities that he can turn down the sexual advances of the leading operatic diva, Madame La Guimard (Minnie Driver), Bologne seeks the job of directing the Paris Opera. He convinces Marie Antoinette to arrange a contest between Bologne and the Viennese composer Christoph Gluck (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), who is the favorite of the stodgy and bigoted elite. To win the contest, each man must compose and stage an opera, and a committee and Marie Antoinette will choose the winner.

As he organizes his opera, Bologne is determined to cast a young, dynamic soprano: Marie-Josephine de Montalembert (played by Samara Weaving, star of “Ready or Not” and the celebrity first victim in the recent “Scream VI”). Marie-Josephine wants to perform, but her rigid husband, Marquis de Montalembert (Marton Czokas), refuses to let his wife parade on the stage. But when the Marquis is sent away to war, Marie-Josephine figures what her husband doesn’t know won’t hurt him. But when the connection between Marie-Josephine and Bologne crosses from the rehearsal stage to the bedroom, Bologne is playing with fire.

Meanwhile, as we learn from the screenplay by Stefani Robinson (who has written episodes of “Atlanta” and “What We Do in the Shadows”), the people are protesting the monarchy — and the stirrings of revolution inspire Bologne and his music.

Director Stephen Williams — who has a deep resumé on prestige TV, including “Watchmen,” “Westworld” and “How to Get Away With Murder” — captures the satin-wrapped finery of pre-revolution France, and the rot of racism and hypocrisy lying under that fancy surface. He also recognizes that the movie needs to be a stage for Harrison (“Waves,” “Luce,” “It Comes at Night”), who channels Bologne’s confidence and restrained anger into a performance worthy of an opera of his own.

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‘Chevalier’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 21, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for thematic content, some strong language, suggestive material and violence. Running time: 107 minutes.

Review: 'Beau Is Afraid' is an unholy mess of a movie, a slog of neuroses and an example of giving a director too much slack

Writer-director Ari Aster, the man who spooked us with “Hereditary” and freaked us out with “Midsommar,” gets a chance to indulge his filmmaking impulses and psychological navel-gazing with “Beau Is Afraid” — and, oh my golly, what a mess it is.

Seriously, this is the weirdest and most disgusting thing its star, Joaquin Phoenix, has ever done — and I’m not forgetting about “I’m Still Here,” that godawful fake documentary he made with Casey Affleck that included his obnoxiously deadpan performance on Letterman.

Phoenix plays Beau Wassermann, a jittery, balding man who has a lot to be afraid of — with an apocalypse in progress on the street outside his apartment, and where running across the street to the bodega includes the risk of getting stabbed by a naked crazy man. But what Beau is even more afraid of, as he sometimes tells his therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) is disappointing his mother (Patti LuPone), who’s expecting Beau to catch a plane and come visit her.

After he misses his plane — a result of losing his apartment keys, and every freaky person in the neighborhood getting in — he calls Mom again, and a UPS driver answers the phone and tells Beau that his mom has died, her head crushed by a falling chandelier. 

Beau then gets hit by a delivery van, and wakes up in a different kind of hell: The suspiciously perfect suburban home of Grace (Amy Ryan) and Roger (Nathan Lane). Grace was driving the delivery van, and Roger is a surgeon who dressed Beau’s wounds. They’ve put him up in the room of their teen daughter, Toni (Kylie Rogers), who’s not thrilled with taking the couch and letting a strange man in her bed. 

When Beau’s healthy enough to use the phone, he calls his mom’s lawyer (Richard Kind), who hectors Beau by telling him all the funeral plans for his mother are on hold until he gets there.

What follows is a harrowing and confusing journey through the woods, and through Beau’s memories — primarily focusing on a cruise young Beau (Armen Nahapetian) took with Mom (played as a younger woman by Zoe Lister-Jones), when Beau found his first love, Elaine (played at different ages by Julie Antonelli and Parker Posey). There’s also a sequence where Beau stumbles on a theater troupe, and sees an epic saga of his life play out in animation, directed by Chilean animators Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña. This animated section is the only genuinely emotional passage in this bloated, self-indulgent film.

Aster isn’t the first filmmaker to take his neuroses out for a walk for the audience’s viewing pleasure. But, my heavens, he really makes a meal out of it, wallowing in every perceived fault or shortcoming of Beau’s life — without giving the audience any hint of a redeeming quality that would make us care about this mumbling, indecisive, pathetic little worm. Even when we approach some sort of resolution — in predictable Freudian fashion, it all traces back to his mother — we don’t get catharsis, just more self-loathing.

I know of critics, even friends of mine, who liked this movie, who found the beautiful flowers growing out of the giant pile of manure. I have to say I tried, as someone who loved “Hereditary” and liked “Midsommar,” to meet “Beau Is Afraid” at least halfway, to catch the strange vibe Aster was creating and try to connect with it. But in a movie where the main character is a punching bag and every other character is lacing up their boxing gloves, there’s no human component with which I could relate. I choose to think that’s Aster’s failing, not mine.

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‘Beau Is Afraid’

★

Opens Friday, April 21, in theaters. Rated R for strong violent content, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language. Running time: 179 minutes.

Review: 'Guy Ritchie's The Covenant,' under its bombast, is a thoughtful story of two men who become brothers in arms

It’s always intriguing when a popcorn-movie kind of director, like Guy Ritchie (“King Arthur,” the Robert Downey Jr. “Sherlock Holmes” movies), tries to make something serious — as he does, with some success, in the harrowing war drama “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.”

(Yes, the director’s name is part of the title — as the local studio rep strongly reminded us before the screening started. Since I do not wish to receive angry emails from MGM, I’m going with it.)

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Master Sergeant John Kinley, leading a squad of soldiers in Afghanistan in 2018, some 16 years into the 20-year war the United States fought there in an ultimately doomed attempt to root out the Taliban. (I’m not going to get into finger-pointing about this, except to say those 20 years covered more than 11 years with a Republican in the White House, and more than 8 years with a Democratic president — so there’s plenty of blame to go around.)

Kinley needs a new interpreter for the squad, someone who can speak the local language and communicate with the Afghanis the squad will encounter. The one he gets is Ahmed, played by the Iraqi-born Danish actor Dar Salim. Ahmed isn’t like most interpreters, Kinley soon discovers, in that he’s tough and is willing to take the initiative to get information from the locals. Kinley later learns that Ahmed is motivated by the death of his son, at the hands of the Taliban. Ahmed also has a wife, Basira (Fariba Shekhan), who’s about to have a baby — and he aims to protect her from the Taliban, who are targeting Afghanis who are cooperating with the Americans.

The script — by Ivan Atkinson, Marn Davies and Ritchie — makes a sharp turn when Kinley’s unit is ambushed by Taliban fighters. Kinley and Ahmed are the only survivors, and the two must travel by foot overland, off the roads, to get back to base. During part of this journey, Kinley is injured, and Ahmed must risk his life to protect him and get him to safety.

The second half of the film focuses on a harsh reality of the Afghanistan war: The United States promised interpreters that they would get visas to America, to keep them from getting killed by the Taliban, and those visas often didn’t arrive as promised.

It’s interesting that there’s no “based on a true story” tag at the beginning of “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.” Instead, the story is an amalgam of many similar stories — symbolized by the numerous photos of U.S. servicemen with their Afghani interpreters shown over the closing credits. Ritchie thus allows himself to cherry-pick the details that make the most dramatic sense, including an ending that’s weirdly rah-rah about a war we arguably lost. (Again, no finger-pointing, but one shouldn’t blame the troops for the errors of their commanders.)

What gives “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” its solid footing is the twinned performances by Gyllanhaal and Salim. The movie lets Kinley and Ahmed’s relationship build, first with each wary of the other, and gradually building on mutual respect, admiration and ultimately an unbreakable bond of friendship. There’s also a strong sense of gratitude and a debt to be paid, as Kinley must go back and rescue the man to whom he owes his life — and both actors feel the weight of that debt, and show us the depth of that friendship.

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‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’

★★★

Opens Friday, April 21, in theaters. Rated R for violence, language throughout and brief drug content. Running time: 123 minutes.

Review: 'Renfield,' about Dracula's bug-eating familiar, is a good idea that doesn't get any space to breathe

There’s a good idea for a movie in “Renfield,” a blood-dripping comedic take on Count Dracula’s bug-eating assistant — but that idea gets swarmed, like bugs around a piece of meat, by so many bad movie impulses.

Our titular anti-hero, Robert Montague Renfield (played by Nicholas Hoult), relates his origin story early one: A 19th-century real estate lawyer, he tried to pitch a Romanian count on a land deal — only to find himself turned into the count’s minion. The upside is that he shares a bit of Dracula’s powers, which kick in when he eats an insect. The downside is that he must retrieve victims for Dracula (played by Nicolas Cage) and hide the boss somewhere dark and gross when he inevitably gets nearly destroyed by heroic humans deploying sunlight, holy water and protection spells.

That’s where we meet Renfield today, helping a charred and grotesque Dracula reconstitute himself in an abandoned New Orleans hospital. While Dracula is on the mend, Renfield is spending his time sitting in a support group for people in toxic relationships. Renfield wouldn’t describe himself that way, though he’s starting to have reservations about his decades of leading people to their deaths. He uses the group meetings to find people whose lives would improve if their toxic partners came down with a sudden case of being sucked dry. 

When the toxic partner in question turns out to be a lowlife drug dealer, Renfield finds himself in the middle of a tediously routine gangland war. The lowlife drug dealer owes money to New Orleans’ most intimidating crime family, the Lobos — who get put out when their thugs turn up dead. First, the obnoxious son, Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz), goes looking for Renfield, followed by the real boss, Teddy’s mother Bella (Shohreh Aghdashloo). 

The crime family seems to have every cop in New Orleans on the take — except one, Rebecca (played by Awkwafina), who’s determined to take down the Lobos, who killed her dad, also an honest cop. When the Lobos try to put a hit out on Rebecca, it’s Renfield, fueled by bugs, who saves her life and becomes an inadvertent hero. Being heroic feels nice, for a change, and Renfield starts wondering if he can break free of the co-dependency and toxicity of working for Dracula.

The script — by Ryan Ridley (a writer for “Rick and Morty”) and Robert Kirkman (creator of “The Walking Dead” universe) — is in a tug-of-war over what’s the funniest and most interesting story. One is about Renfield’s journey of self-discovery, a light parody of support groups and psychologist-speak. The other is tongue-in-cheek mayhem, where we’re supposed to laugh at the ridiculousness of the carnage. The movie toggles between those two settings for 90 minutes, and neither develops the way they should.

The drawing cards for “Renfield” are the lead actors. Hoult (“Mad Max: Fury Road,” “X-Men: First Class”) is perfectly deadpan as the long-suffering familiar, finally coming into his own. And Cage, who can chew scenery like no human on earth, finally gets to deliver the biting (pun intended) performance he’s dreamed of since “Vampire’s Kiss” in 1988. It’s a pity, really, that Cage’s chance came in a movie that’s so … bloodless.

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‘Renfield’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for blood violence, some gore, language throughout and some drug use. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: 'Tori and Lokita' is a harrowing drama about young refugees trying to survive an immigration nightmare

The directing brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have such a knack for zeroing in on people in the working class and underground economy of their home town of Liege, Belgium, that one almost takes it for granted — until they make another movie, like the heartbreaking “Tori and Lokita,” and find a whole new way to dive in to a compelling story.

Lokita (Joely Mbundu), a teen refugee from Benin, is concerned that she won’t get a visa to stay permanently in Belgium, like his 10-year-old brother, Tori (Pablo Schils), has. The immigration examiners ask Lokita about how she reunited with her brother at the refugee camp, and the holes and contradictions in her account have the examiners suspicious and doesn’t get her papers.

Getting her papers could open up Lokita’s world. It would mean she and Tori wouldn’t have to deliver marijuana to the clients of a shady dealer, Betim (Alban Ukaj), or take the 50 euros extra Betim offers if she’ll comply when he unzips his pants. Lokita and Tori need the money to send back to their mother, back in Benin, who berates Lokita for not sending 100 euros a month as was arranged. Lokita also is trying to dodge Firmin (Marc Zinga), the smuggler who got her and Tori to Belgium, and who still wants a cut of what Lokita earns.

With all these forces working against Lokita, she feels she’s left with one option: A job Betim has arranged, working 3 months in isolation tending the plants in his weed-growing operation. If she completes the three months, Betim will get her a reliable set of forged papers. But for various reasons, finishing that shift is a tough assignment.

The Dardennes get invitations to the Cannes Film Festival the way other people collect parking tickets — with Palme D’Or victories for “Rosetta” (1999) and “The Child” (2005), and “Tori and Lokita” got a special 75th anniversary prize last year. They do it by taking a social issue — in this case, the plight of refugees struggling to fit into Belgian society — and focus in on how one or two characters are affected by that issue.

“Tori and Lokita” may sound like a serious-minded message movie, but it plays like a thriller — with Lokita facing progressively more dire conditions to collect enough euros to satisfy Betim, Firmin and her mother, all at once. When Tori finds Lokita at the secret marijuana growing site, her calculations for how to survive this ordeal get immeasurably harder.

The other thing the Dardennes do is discover excellent young talent, and Mbundu and Schils are astonishingly good in their first movie roles. Their grim determination to stick together, and their hints that they have endured worse, are what propel “Tori and Lokita” to become a shattering portrayal of two children who have had to grow up way too fast.

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‘Tori & Lokita’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 14, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for violence, language, sexual content and drug use. Running time: 89 minutes; in French with subtitles.