The Washington Post - 27.03.2020

15

EZ

THE WASHINGTON POST

.

FRIDAy, MARCH 27, 2020

us, along with the film’s other

guides, up to the 1990 passage of

the Americans With Disabilities

Act. The film does an excellent job

of tying the struggle to achieve

disability rights to the parallel bat-

tles for g ay ( and other) rights. But it

speaks loudest and most passion-

ately simply by giving voice to an

often silenced community. R.

Available via Netflix. Contains

some strong language, including

sexual and drug references. Con-

tains some subtitles. 116 minutes.

— M.O.

In 2016, Brazilian filmmaker

Kleber Mendonça Filho made one

of the year’s best films: “Aquarius,”

starring Sônia Braga at her most

regally s ublime. Braga is on hand in

Mendonça’s new film, “ Bacurau ,”

albeit in slightly different form. In

this strange, often confounding

tale of a tiny Brazilian v illage trying

to save its own life, Braga plays the

town’s grim, determined, slightly

wild-eyed doctor, named Domin-

gas, who is as handy with her booze

flask as with p rofanity-laced

speeches. In a futuristic tale remi-

niscent of “Children of Men” and,

more recently, the m isbegotten s at-

ire “The Hunt,” “Bacurau” doesn’t

give filmgoers many clues as to

what i s going on in a town t hat feels

simultaneously cursed, haunted

and endowed with supernatural

powers by way of a mysterious

psychotropic pill. When things fi-

nally b ecome clear, t hey do so amid

clouds of bullets and blood; as with

“A quarius,” Mendonça is con-

cerned with such issues as history,

identity and sense of place — but

here, he couches his themes in

generic grindhouse violence. Con-

voluted and sometimes willfully

opaque, “Bacurau” nonetheless

marks an intriguing entry on the

CV of a filmmaker who nearly al-

ways surprises. Unrated. Available

via cinemaartstheatre.com and

afisilver.afi.com. C ontains obsceni-

ty, nudity, sexuality and graphic

violence. In English and Portu-

guese with subtitles. 131 minutes.

— Ann Hornaday

In “ Uncorked ,” Mamoudou Ath-

ie plays Elijah, whose life dream is

to become a sommelier, despite his

father’s wishes that he go into the

family b arbecue business. So far, so

predictable: As a melodrama of

father-son separation (and, just

maybe, reconciliation), this earnest

but often bland and choppy take o n

the form i s as generic as they come.

But thanks to a terrific cast —

including Athie a s well as Courtney

B. Vance and Niecy Nash, who play

Elijah’s parents — “Uncorked”

sparks to life with moments of

heartfelt emotion and wryly obser-

vant home truths. Nash’s and

Vance’s performances are particu-

larly gratifying, as they make a

long-term couple’s intimacy as pal-

pable in gentle put-downs as in

loving gestures. For his part, Athie

is a paragon of wary filial reserve.

Written and directed by Prentice

Penny, “Uncorked” bears whiffs of

such predecessors as “Sideways”

and “The Paper Chase,” w ith u nder-

notes of “East of Eden” in familial

psychodynamics. But if Penny’s

plot points are derivative, he man-

ages to infuse them with specificity

and meaning — especially by way

of Memphis, where the movie was

filmed, and whose music, food and

history suffuse the enterprise, in-

cluding a blink-and-you-miss-it

glimpse of the Lorraine Motel and

a delectable scene filmed at C C

Blues Club. Even at its most famil-

iar and stodgily paced, “Uncorked”

possesses a terroir all its own. Rat-

ed TV-MA. Available via Netflix.

Contains coarse language a nd brief

sexuality. 104 minutes.

— A.H.

In “ The Occupant ,” a prosper-

ous advertising executive named

Javier, l iving in a gorgeous Barce-

lona apartment with his wife and

son, has fallen on hard times. As

the movie opens, Javier (Javier

Gutiérrez) is visiting various

agencies trying to find work, to no

avail; as a middle-aged man on

the downslope of his once-major

career, he’s the victim of both

ageism and inflated self-impor-

tance. Forced to move out of his

home, he embarks on a bizarre

journey of revenge, fueled by grief

and an overwhelming sense of

entitlement. Written and directed

by brothers David and Àlex Pas-

tor, “The Occupant” touches on

the same themes of class envy and

dispossession as “Parasite”; if this

film is more conventional and l ess

surprising, it benefits from clean

lines, stylish visual design and an

engrossing central performance

by Gutiérrez, who has the com-

pact, pent-up energy of Anthony

Hopkins at his most quietly vola-

tile. TV-MA. Available via Netflix.

Contains sexual references and

brief violence. In Spanish with

subtitles. 103 minutes.

— Ann Hornaday

Movies

New movies

available online

As World War II thrillers go,
“ Resistance ” has a secret weapon:
Its hero is... Marcel Marceau. You
may be surprised to learn that the
famous mime really did work for
the French Resistance during the
Nazi occupation, helping to trans-
port hundreds of Jewish orphans
out of the country — a nd, a t least in
the film, attacking a Nazi guard at
one point in a particularly creative,
if seemingly far-fetched, way. As
played by Jesse Eisenberg, Mar-
ceau, the artistically inclined son of
a Jewish butcher, makes for a
somewhat twitchier presence than
you may imagine the famously
physically controlled Marceau to
have been as a young man. (Eisen-
berg is also considerably older than
his character, who was i n his late
teens and early 20s during the
occupation.) But Eisenberg’s s igna-
ture intensity only heightens what
is, in some respects, an otherwise
by-the-book Holocaust drama,
bringing to life a man whose art
and rapport with children became
instrumental in his underground
activities. German actor Matthias
Schweighöfer is particularly good
and menacing in the role of the
film’s Nazi villain, Klaus Barbie,
known as the Butcher of Lyon for
his role, during the collaborationist
Vichy regime, in torturing and
murdering French Jews and mem-
bers of the Resistance. R. Available
via various streaming platforms
and on demand. Contains scenes of
violence. In English and some Ger-
man with subtitles. 120 minutes.
— Michael O’Sullivan

The second film to come from
Barack and Michelle Obama’s
Higher Ground Productions, “ Crip
Camp: A Disability Revolution ” is
a stirring, funny and informative
documentary that opens in 1971 at
Camp Jened, the Upstate New York
summer camp for disabled teens
that lends the film its tongue-in-
cheek title. Co-directed by Nicole
Newnham and J ames Lebrecht
(the latter of whom was a camper
that summer), “Crip Camp” gradu-
ally evolves from a fond and mov-
ing reminiscence of an idyllic ref-
uge of respect and acceptance —
run by hippies, as Lebrecht tells us
— to a fascinating history of the
disability rights movement. (Re-
cently discovered archival footage,
shot by the People’s Video Theater
in 1971, brings the camp to vivid
life.) In a ddition to Lebrecht, one of
the other frequent voices in the
film is that of Judith Heumann,
another camp veteran who went
on to found the advocacy group
Disabled in Action, and who takes

“ Fantastic Fungi ” is already a

cult hit: Louie Schwartzberg’s

documentary about mushrooms

became hugely popular during a

limited theatrical run earlier this

spring; its rerelease for digital

viewing during the coronavirus

quarantine couldn’t be better

timed. With equal measures of

efficiency and passion, Schwartz-

berg examines the history, cul-

ture, science and incredible heal-

ing properties of the mycelium,

the microscopic network that has

supported and created life for

hundreds of millions of years, and

just might hold the key to cogni-

tion itself. Chronicling the

groundbreaking work of mycolo-

gist Paul Stamets, with exquisite

time-lapse cinematography and

arresting graphics, “Fantastic

Fungi” makes a persuasive case

for mushrooms, not only as na-

ture’s cure-all (or closest thing),

but as portals to spiritual enlight-

enment. What might have been

mind-blowing just a few months

ago now feels urgently of the mo-

ment. Unrated. Available via

theavalon.org and afisil-

ver.afi.com. Contains nothing ob-

jectionable. 81 minutes.

— A.H.

Also streaming

The Cold War thriller “ Bal-

loon ” tells the true story of a

group of East Germans who at-

tempt to escape to the West in a

homemade hot-air balloon. Un-

rated. Available via theav-

alon.org. In German with subti-

tles. 125 minutes.

Set in Newcastle, England,

filmmaker Ken Loach’s drama

“ Sorry We Missed Yo u ” follows

the struggles of a working-class

family in the new gig economy.

Unrated. Available via cine-

maartstheatre.com. 101 minutes.

A corrupt cop becomes entan-

gled with mobsters — and a

femme fatale — in a plot to spring

a man from a Bucharest prison in

Romanian director Corneliu Po-

rumboiu’s twisty thriller “ The

Whistlers .” (Read the full re-

view at washingtonpost.com/

goingoutguide/movies .) Unrated.

Available via afisilver.afi.com.

Contains violence and explicit

sexual material. In Romanian,

English and Spanish with subti-

tles. 97 minutes.

Independent local theaters such

as the AFI Silver Theatre, Cinema

Arts Theatre and the Avalon The-

atre are adding new streaming

titles every week. Check the the-

aters’ websites for additional

films to watch at home.

NINA ROBINSON/NETFLIX

Mamoudou Athie and Courtney B. Vance in “Uncorked.” Athie plays Elijah, whose life dream is to

become a sommelier, despite his father’s (Vance) wishes that he go into the family barbecue business.

TheMovieDir ectoryhasgonedark.

Wewillraisethecurtainagainassoonase ventswarrant.