March 2020 | Rolling Stone | 93
AUTUMN, played by a
wonder of a first-time
actress named Sidney
Flanigan, is 17 and
anxious. She needs
an abortion. But
Pennsylvania, where
she lives, demands pa-
rental consent. Since
that’s not happening,
Autumn persuades
her cousin Skylar (a warmly sympathetic
Talia Ryder) to join her on a bus to New York,
where things should go off without a hitch.
As if. Never Rarely Sometimes Always — a
reference to a doctor’s cold questions about
Autumn’s sexual history, and which is ex-
plained in a truly devastating sequence — puts
you in the empathetic care of Eliza Hittman
(Beach Rats), a writer-director who takes the
pulse of her characters without judgment or
Roe v. Wade speechifying. Though her film
has elements of Romanian filmmaker Cristian
Mungiu’s harrowing drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks
and 2 Days, Hittman relies on the eloquent
but unspoken bond between two teen girls
to nurture the healing process in a world of
toxic masculinity and clinical indifference. Her
urgent film is an emotional wipeout. It’s hard
to watch. It’s impossible to forget. P.T.Flanigan
(right), with
Ryder, fights
for her right
to choose.RIGHT TO CHOOSE
PRODUCED BY
Michelle and Barack
Obama and directed
by Nicole Newnham
with Jim LeBrecht,
this indispensable
documentary defines
what it means to call a
movie inspiring. Their
raucous fist-bump of a film is a 1970s origin
story about Camp Jened, a New York summer
getaway for kids with disabilities located near
Woodstock and run by inexperienced hippies.
Through amazing archival footage, we
see how these kids, who feel like outsiders
due to such conditions as cerebral palsy and
polio, soak up their first sense of belong-
ing. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll all play a
part, wheelchairs be damned. Cheers to the
buoyant touch of co-director LeBrecht, born
with spina bifida, who attended the camp. So
did future activist Judy Heumann, a force of
nature at speaking her mind.
It was Heumann and other camp attendees
who turned their experiences into a national
movement. Using their voices for sit-ins and
protests, they helped pass 1990’s Americans
With Disabilities Act. They are still changing
the world. How? See Crip Camp and have your
faith in humanity restored. P.T.READY, WILLING & DISABLED
Crip Camp
STARRING
Judy Heumann
DIRECTED BY
Nicole Newnham,
Jim LeBrecht
$Never Rarely
Sometimes
Always
STARRING
Sidney Flanigan,
Talia Ryder
DIRECTED BY
Eliza Hittman
$WHAT STARTS as a
teasing psychodra-
ma about Shirley
Jackson, acclaimed
horror author of The
Lottery and architect
of her own fragile
mental state, ends as
something far more
perversely fascinating. Thank Elisabeth Moss,
who brilliantly plays Jackson as a volcano on
the verge of eruption, and director Josephine
Decker, whose experimental Madeline’s Made-
line reveled in leaving folks in a twist. With
this trippy take on Susan Scarf Merrell’s 2014
novel, which spins events from Jackson’s life
into a fictional thriller, Decker’s at it again.
Ms. Jackson plays at being a Fifties faculty
wife at Vermont’s Bennington College to her
cheating professor husband, Stanley Hyman
(Michael Stuhlbarg). To cool his wife’s bouts
of hysteria, Hyman moves his young teach-
ing assistant Fred (Logan Lerman) and his
pregnant wife, Rose (Odessa Young), into the
house. It’s a setup straight out of Who’s Afraid
of Virginia Woolf. Truth hardly matters here.
As Moss fuels the flames and Decker explodes
midcentury myths about a woman’s place, this
movie wants to keep you up at night. And you
can bet Shirley has the last word. P.T.ACTION JACKSON
Moss
as Shirley
JacksonRussian LOLs: ‘Spies Like Us’
LONG BEFORE America worried about Russia using Facebook to fuck with our
elections, there was the 1985 Chevy Chase–Dan Aykroyd comedy about two bumbling,
low-level federal employees sent to fuck with the Soviet Union. The hope is these two
knuckleheads can distract the Kremlin long enough for a pair of real spies to execute a legit mission and
save the world from nuclear destruction. Chaos, naturally, ensues. It’s no Ghostbusters or Fletch, but seen
now, this John Landis-directed farce is a priceless Cold War time capsule that remains shockingly funny —
see the scene in which Chase and Aykroyd meet a group of health care professionals in Afghanistan and
manage to say the word “doctor” 20 times in a single minute. Maybe it’s time for a sequel where they
head back overseas and try to infiltrate a Russian troll farm. ANDY GREENESpies Like Us
1985
AVAILABLE ON
YouTube, Prime
Video, Google Play,
iTunes, VuduRECONSIDEREDCL
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HUTT
ERSTOCKShirley
STARRING
Elisabeth Moss,
Michael Stuhlbarg
DIRECTED BY
Josephine Decker
4Campers
at JenedAykroyd and
Chase rocket
to Russia.