The Week USA – August 31, 2019

Remember the name Viveik

Kalra, because “this film will

make him a star,” said Johnny

Oleksinski in the New York

Post. The young actor displays

“off-the-charts likability” in

the new crowd-pleaser from

the director of Bend It Like

Beckham. Kalra plays Javed,

a British-Pakistani teen in a

depressed town outside London.

The year is 1987, jobs are scarce, and racism is

rampant. One rough night, when Javed learns that

his father has been laid off, he pops in a cassette lent

by a friend: Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A.

Suddenly, “Springsteen becomes his Shakespeare,”

inspiring him to work up the courage to kiss a girl

and pursue his career dreams.

What follows “will make you

feel better than any other film

that comes out this year.” Its

coming-of-age story is fairly

standard, said Leah Greenblatt

in Entertainment Weekly. But

Kalra’s charisma sells it, “even

when the script steers into sheer

wish-fulfillment silliness.” Even

non–Springsteen fans will find it

“a joyous tribute to the way pop songs can detonate

in our lives,” said Steve Pond in TheWrap.com.

“You might shake your head at characters breaking

into full-throated versions of ‘Thunder Road’ and

‘Born to Run,’ but if you don’t surrender to this

grand lunacy, you don’t have a heart.”

The latest raunchy comedy from

producing buddies Seth Rogen

and Evan Goldberg “seems

convinced that it’s riotous,” said

Dennis Harvey in Variety. Think

Superbad, but lewder, and with

11-year-olds instead of teenagers

engaging in “crude but obvi-

ous” high jinks. Jacob Tremblay,

Brady Noon, and Keith L.

Williams co-star as foulmouthed

friends who’ve just begun middle school. When

Tremblay’s Max is invited to a kissing party that his

crush will attend, he panics because he doesn’t know

how to kiss. Soon the boys are consulting online

porn for insight and practicing on what they assume

to be a parent’s CPR doll. “Some will no doubt

find this material offensive,

when the bigger trouble is that

it just isn’t very good.” Despite

all the sex-toy jokes, “Good

Boys also has its fair share of

‘awww’ moments,” said Eric

Kohn in IndieWire.com. And

because the movie believably

inhabits the naïve worldview of

its sixth-grade heroes, it often

proves “adorable and twisted at

the same time.” Besides, “the casting is great,” said

Kristy Puchko in TheGuardian.com. As hilarious

as Noon’s macho bluster is, Williams “shines the

brightest” as the trio’s most earnestly well-behaved

member. “He even turns a scene of confessing his

crimes to his parents into a laugh riot.”

Know this before watching

One Child Nation: “It’s a tough

movie; at times, it feels almost

unbearable,” said Manohla

Dargis in The New York Times.

Filmmaker Nanfu Wang, who

moved from China to the U.S.

in her 20s, had just become

pregnant for the first time when

she decided to team with Jialing

Zhang on a documentary about

the Chinese policy from 1979 to 2015 that limited

each family in the country to a single child. The

measure led to hundreds of millions of infant aban-

donments and abortions, especially of female babies,

and One Child Nation unpacks the horror “with

strategically restrained outrage.”

Wang leads the investigation,

and one midwife she speaks to

even admits to killing babies

after delivery, said Justin Chang

in the Los Angeles Times. Most

disturbing, though, is that the

midwife is the only interviewee

who expresses any regret, any

recognition of complicity. At 89

minutes, One Child Nation is

hardly comprehensive, but “its directness and inti-

macy lend an indelibility that encyclopedic framing

could never approximate,” said Inkoo Kang in Slate

.com. “The one-child policy haunts Wang, and she

wants it to haunt the viewer too.”

Blinded by

the Light

A child of immigrants

discovers Springsteen.

++++

Directed by

Gurinder Chadha

(PG-13)

Review of reviews: Film ARTS^25

New on DVD and Blu-ray

Amazing Grace

(Universal, $15)

Aretha Franklin’s best-selling album finally

has a concert film to match, said Rolling

Stone. In 1972, backed by a choir at a Los

Angeles Baptist church, Aretha delivered a

gospel performance that blew the roof off

the place. “It’s an unforgettable experience

watching her up there, shaking the rafters.”

The Souvenir

(Lionsgate, $20)

In Joanna Hogg’s recent drama, Honor

Swinton Byrne stars as a 1980s London film

student who grows into a confident artist

while her affair with a genteel addict is falling

apart. The movie “demands to be seen,” said

The Boston Globe. “Hogg is a major film-

maker pointing herself in new directions.”

Avengers: Endgame

(Marvel, $25)

Concluding a superhero saga 11 years in

the making, 2019’s highest-grossing movie

“pays off in all the right ways,” said The

Atlantic. And though the action “has the

usual bland competence of Marvel movies,”

Endgame succeeds when it slows down

and “basks in the charisma of its ensemble.”

Good Boys

Three suburban tweens

mildly misbehave.

++++

Directed by

Gene Stupnitsky

(R)

One Child

Nation

A look back

at a brutal policy

++++

Directed by Nanfu Wang

and Jialing Zhang

(R)

Kalra: New Jersey in his heart

Neo-rascals Tremblay, Williams, and Noon

Wang with her son: Revisiting a nightmare

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