28 ARTS Review of reviews: Film
So
ny^Pictur
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assics,^ HBOAnthony Hopkins’ latest screen performance
reminds us why he has been venerated for
so long, said Richard Lawson in VanityFair
.com. Playing an aging retiree, also named
Anthony, who is sinking into dementia, the
83-year-old Oscar winner creates a charac-
ter who “goes from sweetly doddering to
hectoring, charming to frightened, obstinate
and then, sometimes, resigned to the limits
of his failing perception.” It’s “a towering
piece of acting,” one that’s “as precise and
exacting as it is enveloping.” Florian Zeller,
directing an adaptation of his own hit play,
stages most of the action in the protago-
nist’s tasteful London flat, said A.A. Dowd
in AVClub.com. But after Olivia Colman is
introduced as the protagonist’s daughter,
Anne, the film begins scrambling time lines,
casting, and even the apartment’s layout to
immerse viewers in Anthony’s disorienta-
tion. At one point, Anne is suddenly played
by Olivia Williams rather than Colman—
“an ingenious way to communicate the
character’s inability to tell his loved ones
from strangers.” The audience experiences
Anthony’s losing struggle alongside him,
and “it’s a difficult, often quite brutal, view-
ing experience, as it needs to be,” said
Benjamin Lee in TheGuardian.com. The
Father tells a story that many people may
find too harrowing because it hits so close
to home. But for those who can handle it,
“it’ll stay with you. I know it will stay with
me.” (In select theaters now; available on
demand March 26) PG-13Other new movies
Te s t Pat tern
In just 82 minutes, this spare drama
from first-time director Shatara Michelle
Ford “mines a dizzying amount of topical
issues,” said Kate Erbland in IndieWire.com.
Brittany S. Hall plays a young black woman
who, after a traumatizing encounter with a
stranger, is driven by her white boyfriend
to hospital after hospital in a frustrating
quest to obtain rape-kit testing. The
“sneakily powerful” lead performances
keep us hooked, and Ford finds a restrained
ending that “forces us to re-evaluate every-
thing we thought we knew.” (In theaters or
$12 via KinoMarquee.com) Not rated17 Blocks
This “remarkable” documentary about
a Washington, D.C., family can initially be
depressing, said Michael O’Sullivan in The
Wash ington Post. “But stick with it.” GunThe Father
++++
Colman and Hopkins: An Oscar pairingviolence, poverty, and drug use were more
than a backdrop to 9-year-old Emmanuel
Durant Jr., but 20 years of filming and tap-
ing went into creating this portrait of the
single-parent black household, located
17 blocks from the Capitol, that he grew up
in. There’s a violent tragedy at the story’s
center, but what 17 B l o c k s is “actually
about” is the resilience of hope. ($12 via
virtual cinemas) Not ratedSilk Road
Though “never a dull affair,” this thriller
about the dark-web marketplace Silk Road
“doesn’t quite click,” said David Lewis in
the San Francisco Chronicle. Jason Clarke
is worth watching as a DEA agent on the trail
of Ross Ulbricht, the libertarian whiz kid who
created the now-defunct online source for
guns and drugs. As Ulbricht, Nick Robinson
is even better. But both the rise of Silk Road
and the chase itself are mishandled. The final
confrontation we wait for “never really mate-
rializes.” (In theaters and $6 on demand) RNight of the Kings
This French-language Oscar entry from the
Ivory Coast “can be downright confusing to
follow, but is never less than mesmerizing,”
said Peter Debruge in Variety. Koné Bakary
plays a new arrival to a notorious prison who
is told he must spin stories for his fellow
inmates through the night and will die when
he’s finished. His inventive tales conjure
magical-realist scenes that play out before us,
including a spectacular showdown “worthy
of The Lord of the Rings.” (In theaters now;
available on demand March 5) R“Is Woody Allen’s career finally toast?”
asked Lorraine Ali in the Los Angeles
Times. Across the three decades since the
prolific filmmaker was accused of sexu-
ally abusing his daughter Dylan Farrow
when she was 7, Hollywood has answered
the question by awarding Allen an Oscar
(in 2012), a lifetime achievement award
(in 2014), and, until recently, the backing
to make a new movie every year. But for
Allen, now 85, “things might be about to
change.” HBO’s new four-part docuseries
Allen v. Farrow “threatens to burn what’s
left of his career and legacy to the ground.”
Folding in interviews from former babysit-
ters, child-welfare workers, and prosecu-
tors, the series mounts a “devastating”
case against Allen that depicts a pattern of
inappropriate behavior with Dylan prior
to the alleged 1992 assault. It also shows
how Allen manipulated his affair with then-
partner Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter,
Soon-Yi Previn, to save his career. Many
former fans won’t be able to stomach his
movies again, “especially since so many
are about young girls’ deep infatuation
with older men.”
Allen v. Farrow: The docuseries that could torch Woody Allen’s legacy
But Allen isn’t the sole focus of this docu-
mentary, said Jen Chaney in NYMag.com.
Despite a title that references Allen’s ugly
battle with Farrow, the HBO series is most
valuable because it “places Dylan at the
center of her own story.” Now 35, she
speaks at length about her abuse, sharing,
for example, how an overdoting Allen often
crawled into bed with her wearing only
his underwear. She also details the last-
ing effects of the assault, and at one point
“has to pause because she involuntarily
starts trembling.” We also see home videoof a sad-eyed 7-year-old Dylan telling her
mother that her father has “touched her
privates.” After watching those clips, “the
idea that the child was coached is harder to
rationalize than it ever has been.” Though
the series “leaves some questions unan-
swered,” it leaves no doubt of how easy it’s
been for famous men to dismiss women and
girls, “to dub someone like Mia Farrow
a vindictive, scorned woman—and then
cement that narrative in the press.”Allen declined to be interviewed for the
series, said Roger Moore in Rogers Movie
Nation.com, but he has denied the sexual
assault allegation and has dismissed Allen
v. Farrow as a “shoddy hit piece.” So what
we get here is “only the prosecution’s side.”
Neither Mia nor Dylan Farrow seems to
have had to field even one unwelcome
question. Still, the mountain of evidence
the series gathers, and Allen’s “provable
lies,” leave no doubt about what occurred.
Whatever its flaws, Allen v. Farrow holds
Allen to account in a way that the courts
never did. “Yes, he’s canceled. And yes, the
old creep still got off too easy.”The Allen-Farrow brood on a family trip