Buzz Blog

Chile ’76 **1/2
Co-writer/director Manuela Martelli certainly makes it clear early on that she’s fashioning this psychological/political drama as a horror movie, but the thing about horror movies is that it helps if eventually there’s some sort of payoff. The title places the action early in the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, when Carmen Orellana (Aline Küppenheim)—the wife of a successful doctor in Santiago, Chile—heads to the family beach house to oversee a renovation. There she is asked by a local priest to help with the care of Elías (Nicolás Sepúlveda), a young man with a bullet wound who turns out to be part of an anti-government movement. Martelli’s opening sequence goes heavy on the ominous symbolism, and from there leans into María Portugal’s dissonant score to emphasize the dangers of Carmen’s situation; the shots following her car on a winding road to the beach feel like echoes of Kubrick’s sinister opening to The Shining. But while Küppenheim’s performance certainly proves effective at capturing a privileged woman learning about realities to which she’d been oblivious, there’s neither a compelling enough arc to her character nor enough actual tension-release structure to provide a foundation. The result is a great idea for a movie that remains too abstract to be truly horrifying. Available June 16 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

Close to Vermeer ***
People’s peculiar, focused passions will never stop being interesting, so it’s a good thing that Suzanne Raes’ documentary is less about its ostensible subject—the efforts behind putting together the largest ever exhibition of Johannes Vermeer paintings in Amsterdam—than about the people involved. There is certainly a bit of a procedural component, as curators Gregor J.M. Weber and Pieter Roelofs undertake the process of gathering as many of Vermeer’s verified paintings as possible from other museums and private collectors. But while the specific artist in question presents many qualities that make him a compelling subject of study—with mysteries surrounding his history, his methodology and even ongoing disagreements about which works should be attributed to him—Raes focuses in on the emotional component of feeling a deep connection to art. She captures people moved to tears by their memories of first encountering certain works, and historians who, when handling a work with a woman as its central subject, refer to the painting not as “it,” but “her.” As a result, Close to Vermeer turns the work of compiling this particular exhibition not as some abstract exercise in logistics, but something closer to coordinating a family reunion: a task based first and foremost in love. Available June 16 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

Elemental **1/2
See feature review. Available June 16 in theaters. (PG)

Extraction II ***
When the first Extraction hit Netflix in April 2020, it served as an almost comforting reminder that, in the midst of the COVID shutdown of movie theaters, you could still get your dose of cinematic action adrenaline. And while this one is less of a circa-1990s Tony Scott copycat, it still offers a pretty good example of the kind of thing you want when you want this kind of thing. Chris Hemsworth returns as Tyler Rake, ex-military-turned-mercenary, who barely survives the events at the end of Extraction, only to end up targeted by a criminal boss (Tornike Gorgrichiani) in the Republic of Georgia after killing his brother during a rescue operation. To the credit of screenwriter Joe Russo, he puts our hero on a long path to physical recovery, which does more to humanize Rake than the ongoing backstory of his paternal grief. But really, we’re here for the fast-paced stuff, and while the 20 minute centerpiece “single take”—I’d put scare quotes around the scare quotes if I could to emphasize the technical trickery—provides plenty of oomph, it gets even better later on, particularly a vertigo-inducing showdown between Rake and our big bad guy on a glass rooftop that makes one wish for a giant screen to enjoy it on. That’s actually one of the biggest gripes with this thing, in fact: It’s a made-for-streamer feature that begs for a theatrical experience. While there’s nothing groundbreaking here, it’s satisfying enough to remind you, even at a time when you now can go back to theaters, why you should go back to theaters. Available June 16 via Netflix. (R)

The Flash **
It’s hard to decide which is more frustrating: That the fun stuff here is too often overwhelmed by familiarity, or that the fun stuff here is too often overwhelmed by hypocrisy. This solo adventure for Barry Allen/The Flash (Ezra Miller) finds him discovering that his super-speed actually allows him to go back in time, inspiring a plan to save his mother (Maribel Verdú) from her tragic death that inadvertently mucks up the multiverse. That development results in an encounter between Barry and alternate version of himself that makes for some goofy character comedy, and the discovery of an alternate Batman, which allows us to enjoy Michael Keaton again donning the cowl accompanied by Danny Elfman’s classic 1989 score. But while the superhero action stuff works well, this is a narrative irretrievably mired in revisiting now-familiar territory: the risks-to-the-multiverse storylines of several recent Marvel features; the “here’s what it looks like to a guy who’s going super-fast” set pieces from the X-Men movies' Quicksilver sequences, spoiled here by some truly awful CGI; even this particular “Flashpoint” plot from the recently-concluded Flash TV series. And beyond all that, there’s yet another franchise movie built entirely around going “remember these several decades’ worth of other iterations of these characters?” That makes it awfully hard to take it seriously when this movie earnestly lectures against not being able to let go of the past, or refusing to simply let things die when it’s clearly their time. Available June 16 in theaters. (PG-13)

It Ain’t Over **1/2
Non-fiction cinema would improve overnight if there were a legitimate distribution system for documentary shorts, so that filmmakers don’t feel obliged to draw out to 90 minutes an idea that would have been best served at around 30. Director Sean Mullin digs into the life and career of Lawrence “Yogi” Berra, the legendary New York Yankees catcher who became more famous for his affable, cartoonish personality and quirky turns of phrase than for his skills on the diamond. That’s really the centerpiece idea of the movie—Berra don’t get no respect—and Mullin ends up using his archival footage and interview subjects to say more or less the same thing in a variety of different ways. Yes, he also explores Berra’s off-the-field life, including his childhood in St. Louis, his military service and his long marriage to wife Carmen, in a way that makes it clear everyone thought he was a great guy as well as a great ballplayer. It just feels like every anecdote gets stretched out far longer than necessary, most notably an infamously controversial call of Jackie Robinson stealing home during a World Series game. Maybe it serves the idea of Berra’s stubborn determination when he felt wronged—much like his long feud with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner—but It Ain’t Over’s provides a reminder that the perhaps-apocryphal aphorism that gives the movie its name should have an addendum: “It ain’t over, but maybe it should have been a while ago.” Available June 16 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)