10 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY10, 2020
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For more reviews, visit
newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town COURTESY DREAMLAB FILMSAn outstanding offering in this year’s edition of MOMA’s documentary
showcase Doc Fortnight (running Feb. 5-19) is Mehrdad Oskouei’s
“Sunless Shadows,” filmed in Iranian prisons and centered on women
who’ve been convicted of killing their abusive husbands or fathers. The
participants detail the many monstrous varieties of abuse that they
endured and emphasize the unresponsiveness of the legal system to
their complaints—including the power of husbands to deny their wives
divorces and the police’s refusal to intervene in cases of domestic violence,
even to the point of siding with violent husbands. One long-abused el-
derly woman who killed her husband remains on death row only because
her sons demand her execution as revenge. When a group of women
discuss the case of a fellow-convict who was forced to marry at the age
of twelve, one of them exhorts the filmmaker to take the camera out of
the prison and into households where such practices endure. Oskouei’s
documentary presents an agonizing view of patriarchal power in public
and private life, law and custom alike.—Richard BrodyAT THEMOVIES
(Joely Richardson); and their children, Lavinia
(Madeleine Arthur), Benny (Brendan Meyer),
and Jack (Julian Hilliard). They live in the
woods with a large dog and a small herd of al-
pacas, who seem a little nervous, as if expecting
bad news. It arrives in the form of a meteorite,
which lands nearby. Under its influence, veg-
etation turns a funky purple-pink, while the
humans lose their composure—and fear for
their sanity. (As for the alpacas, don’t ask.)
Richard Stanley’s film, adapted from a story
by H. P. Lovecraft, begins with pagan rituals
and slowly builds to high-level nuttiness, al-
though none of the special effects, freakish as
they are, can match the gonzo dedication of
Cage’s performance. A brief coda adds a note
of ecological dread that even Lovecraft might
not have foreseen.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in
our issue of 2/3/20.) (In wide release.)
The Gentlemen
Guy Ritchie’s raucous new film stars Matthew
McConaughey as Mickey Pearson, a drug lord
who grows acres of cannabis on properties be-
longing to actual British lords. The tale of Mick-
ey’s rise to power, aided by his wife (Michelle
Dockery) and his unflappable fixer (Charlie
Hunnam), is unearthed by a private investigator
(Hugh Grant), who—cunningly but unwisely—
attempts to use his findings for the purposes of
blackmail. Ritchie likes to traffic back and forth
between high society and lowlifes, averting his
gaze from the middling folk in between, and
straining with all his might to shock us with the
saltiness of his language. (How peculiar, then,
that so little of the movie should ring true.) With
Jeremy Strong and Colin Farrell, plus Eddie
Marsan as a newspaper editor who is kidnapped
and then filmed having sex in a pigsty. So much
for subtlety.—A.L. (2/3/20) (In wide release.)Harriet
The intensity and the lyrical fervor of Kasi
Lemmons’s direction lend this historical drama,
about Harriet Tubman’s escape from slavery
and her work with the Underground Railroad,
the exalted energy of secular scripture. The
action begins in Maryland, in 1849, where
the enslaved Araminta Ross (Cynthia Erivo)
is granted permission to marry the freemanJohn Tubman (Zackary Momoh). When she
is denied the freedom that she’d been prom-
ised, she risks her life to flee to Philadelphia.
Taking her mother’s first name, Harriet, she
returns covertly—and armed—to guide her
relatives to freedom, and is pursued by her
former master and his posse. Then, after the
Fugitive Slave Act is passed, in 1850, Northern
cities no longer insure safety. The movie, writ-
ten by Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard,
presents a gripping and wide-ranging view of
her activity—including her work with a daring
black clergyman (Vondie Curtis-Hall) and the
black abolitionist William Still (Leslie Odom,
Jr.), who devotedly records the stories of the
formerly enslaved—and her inner life, featuring
depictions of the virtually prophetic visions
that guide her in her mission.—R.B. (In wide
release and streaming.)The Rhythm Section
This witless and soulless thriller squanders a
formidable cast, including Blake Lively and
Jude Law, who endure arduous fight scenes in
a doomed effort to lend the flimsy plot some
plausibility. Lively plays a bourgeois British
woman named Stephanie Patrick, who, after
losing her parents and her sister in a terror-
ist bombing of an airplane, inexplicably and
stereotypically becomes a prostitute, bruised
and bedraggled. On a tip from a journalist, she
tracks down a spy (Law) who fills her in on the
details of the attack, gives her rough and rapid
paramilitary training, and sends her on pictur-
esque missions to Madrid, New York, Tangier,
and Marseilles to unravel the conspiracy and
avenge the killings. The director, Reed Mo-
rano, adorns the board-game plotting and the
blank characters with whip-pan and shaky-cam
flash, and the editor, Joan Sobel, does her best
to enliven the thudding drama with flashbacks
and flash-forwards. Lively is given little to
work with besides a succession of wigs and
stunts; the movie playslike an audition reel
for a superhero role. With Sterling K. Brown,
as a cagey operative.—R.B. (In wide release.)The Tall Target
This historical film noir, set in 1861, is centered
on a plot against President-elect Lincoln’s life
as he travels to his Inauguration. Dick Powell
stars as a New York police sergeant named
John Kennedy, who boards the southbound
train that’s conveying Lincoln to Washing-
ton (in defiance of Kennedy’s department,
run by Tammany Democrats) in the hope of
thwarting the plot. Along the way, the officer
finds himself the target of a hired killer. The
action unfolds amid bitter divisions on the eve
of civil war; the voluble passengers include
a pro-Confederate officer, his sister, and the
black woman who is enslaved to them (played
with heartbreaking grace by the young Ruby
Dee), along with a female Boston abolitionist,
a New York businessman whose interests are
threatened by Lincoln’s policies, and a sordid
gallery of political conspirators. The director
Anthony Mann fleshes out the intricate story
with vigorous and subtle attention to its dis-
parate elements—political, psychological, and
brutal. Released in 1951.—R.B. (Film Forum,
Feb. 5-6, and streaming.)