8 THENEWYORKER, APRIL 13, 2020
COURTESY MUG-SHOT PRODUCTIONSThe title of the series “Space Is the Place: Afrofuturism on Film, the
Sequel,” which was to have run at BAB through April 9, comes from a
1972 movie featuring Sun Ra, whose combination of music and the-
atrics, metaphysical poetics and communal living, opened a new and
visionary dimension in jazz and in culture at large. Robert Mugge’s
1980 documentary, “Sun Ra—A Joyful Noise” (streaming on Amazon
and iTunes), provides a revelatory showcase for Sun Ra’s art, which was
anchored by a nucleus of musicians living and rehearsing in a house
in Philadelphia, joined by others on a temporary basis to make a big
band. Its repertoire ranged from amped-up versions of swing and bop
to cosmic storms of fury issuing from Sun Ra’s electronic keyboards.
Vigorously roving long takes of ecstatic concert performances—some
involving the collective frenzies of free jazz, others bringing audiences
to their feet with jaunty percussion, chant, and dance—display the
bandleader’s self-described practice of discipline and precision even as
he discusses, in interviews with Mugge, the political protest reflected
in his transcendental philosophy.—Richard BrodyWHATTOSTREAM
they’re forced to do farm work. The girl, whom
the women name Shula (“uprooted,” in Nyanja),
plays her role to the hilt: she’s employed as a
diviner who, taking the place of judge and jury,
identifies criminals on sight, and is summoned
to end a drought, with tragic consequences.
Nyoni depicts a wide range of misogynistic
abuses of power, as when Mr. Banda (Henry B.J.
Phiri), Shula’s “state guardian” with the Minis-
try of Tourism and Traditional Beliefs, protects
her as “government property.” Nyoni’s frank,
confrontational style is both derisive and em-
pathetic; she extracts powerful symbolic images
from the oppressive environment. In English
and Nyanja.—Richard Brody (Streaming on the
Criterion Channel, Amazon, and other services.)
Johnny O’Clock
This terse and taut film noir, from 1947, is cen-
tered on the romantic and professional conflicts
of the title character, the criminal mastermind
(played by Dick Powell) behind a posh illegal
casino. Yet the action is rooted in the woes of
the wider world—it begins with accusations of
unwarranted police violence, continues with
a woman’s domestic-violence complaint, and
highlights an immigrant’s resentment of his
own bigoted mistreatment. The film’s writer and
director, Robert Rossen, sets up a multidimen-
sional chess game, for mortal stakes, between
Johnny, his glad-handing boss (Thomas Gomez),
his boss’s wife (Ellen Drew), a cagey police in-
spector (Lee J. Cobb), and a scuffling actress
(Evelyn Keyes) whose sister (Nina Foch) worked
at the casino and dated a corrupt detective (Jim
Bannon). The caustically epigrammatic script,
the cast’s suavely controlled gestures of love and
menace, and Rossen’s thrillingly restrained and
stylishly assertive images (as well as his political
conscience) make this pugnacious yet intricate
spectacle a hidden classic of the genre.—R.B.
(Streaming on the Criterion Channel.)The Last Days of Chez Nous
Gillian Armstrong’s 1993 movie is set in a ram-
shackle Sydney household, where an Australian
family gets on with its life, but only just. Beth
(Lisa Harrow) starts to lose her French husband,1
For more reviews, visit
newyorker.com/goings-on-about-townJ.P. (Bruno Ganz), to the attentions of her sister,
Vicki (Kerry Fox); meanwhile, Beth’s daughter,
Annie (Miranda Otto), is falling quietly for Tim
(Kiri Paramore), their lodger with a crewcut
and a sense of humor. Jokes at the dinner table
can turn nasty and upsetting, but people also
recover quickly, and sometimes dance without
warning. This fluent, hopeful comedy (and it is
a comedy, for all the encroachments of sadness)
charts every shift in the emotional climate. It’s a
true ensemble movie: none of the performances
are vain or showy—Harrow in particular braves
all manner of self-exposure, and we can see the
fear beneath her strength. Beth longs to keep
the house in order, but everyone else is itching
to relax or break free—you can see it in the look
of the film, the way that figures mess around
within careful compositions.—Anthony Lane
(Streaming on Netflix and other services.)Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Eliza Hittman’s third feature tells a spare story
in compelling detail: Autumn Callahan (Sidney
Flanigan), a seventeen-year-old high-school
student in a small Pennsylvania town, learns
that she’s pregnant. Unable to get an abortion
in that state without parental consent, she
travels to New York, with her cousin Skylar
(Talia Ryder), for the procedure. Hittman,
who also wrote the script, stays intimately close
to Autumn, spotlighting her cramped life at
home and in school, her independent-minded
ferocity, and her physical sufferings (including
attempts at ending the pregnancy herself). But,
above all, this is a drama of social fabric—of
the impact of policy and prejudice on the daily
thicket of administrative details, the nerve-jan-
gling tension that women endure from ambi-
ent sexual aggression, and the oppressive air
of surveillance and terror sparked by the war
against abortion. The young women’s journey
to New York—and their encounter with a Phila-
delphia hipster (Théodore Pellerin)—offers an
anguished apprenticeship in the wider world’s
network of money and power.—R.B. (Streaming
on Amazon, iTunes, and other services.)Pain and Gain
Michael Bay directed this rowdy, raunchy,
gleefully swaggering true-crime tale, set in
the mid-nineties, about a vain and ambitious
Miami bodybuilder, Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahl-
berg), who is stuck working as a trainer at a
gym. He decides to kidnap a rich client, Victor
Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), with the help of a
mild-mannered colleague (Anthony Mackie),
and a mighty, penitent ex-con (Dwayne John-
son). The three stooges amplify one another’s
mistakes in an echo chamber of increasingly
bloody and brutal idiocy that attracts the at-
tention of a principled private eye (Ed Harris).
The frantic script gives the characters snappy
foot-in-mouth arias; with slow-motion shots and
slam-cuts, kinetic thrills and cocked angles, Bay
captures sensational delusions of grandeur as
well as panicked energy whirling out of control.
The tangy flotilla of side characters—including
a motivational huckster (Ken Jeong) and a sex
therapist (Rebel Wilson)—seems to be having
a rollicking good time selling the tall tale. Re-
leased in 2013.—R.B. (Streaming on Amazon,
YouTube, and other services.)