Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof has endured extensive persecution for his politically charged and socially conscience art. He’s been arrested and imprisoned multiple times, banned from leaving Iran, smeared by his adversaries, and even brutally flogged. Now he stands in exile from his home country, having fled earlier this year after being sentenced on national security charges.

His latest film is “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and it too offers an unflinching perspective on problematic systems and the oppression that comes from them (often violently). Rasoulof shot his film in secret over the course of 70 days, directing, writing, and producing what is a straightforward and unvarnished feature that tackles its heavy subject matter through the heartrending plight of a once tight-knit Tehran family.

A superb script and lights-out performances bring to life this quietly searing domestic drama with its strong political underpinning. Missagh Zareh plays Iman (Missagh Zareh), an honest but ambitious lawyer who has worked for 20 years with the current government regime. As the movie begins, Iman receives a promotion to be a state investigator which is one step away from being a revolutionary court judge. Iman’s promotion has big implications for their family including a nicer house in a better neighborhood and a more prominent social status.

But Iman’s new job also requires that his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and their two daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki) change their lifestyles to fit the new expectations. Iman’s new position brings more scrutiny from the government. And that can end up putting their family in danger, especially once the details of his work is fully brought into the light.

It turns out that Iman wasn’t hired for his years of experience or his judicial prowess. His predecessor was fired for refusing to approve a death indictment and his superiors want an investigator who will approve judgements without such lengthy processes as examining evidence. In fact his first assignment is to sign off on the death penalty for a case he has yet to read over. And the complications only mount from there.

Interestingly, much of Iman’s moral crisis takes place off screen while he’s away at work. During that time we’re left with Najmeh and the girls as they navigate issues of their own. Freedom protests break out across the city and are met with heavy state-led suppression by the police. And as the rallies give way to riots the violence quickly escalates. Rezvan and Sana find themselves involved once their best friend Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) is arrested. Najmeh is caught between protecting her daughters and standing by her husband who is tasked with prosecuting the protesters.

The film’s central conflict is between a father loyal to the theocratic regime and his two daughters who begin speaking out against the oppression they witness. But it’s Najmeh who turns out to be the centerpiece and her personal journey is easily the most compelling. Golestani’s performance runs the gamut of emotions as her character gradually evolves into a much different person. She’s presents a gripping portrait of someone caught amid the political and the personal.

While Rasoulof steadily builds up the intensifying domestic drama, he frequently injects cellphone video taken from real protests which emphasize the truth of what he is depicting. It adds a significant layer of reality to what’s unfolding with the family. At 166 minutes the film extends itself a little too far. And it can be a bit unwieldy and overt in its messaging. But the burgeoning sense of fear and paranoia remains palpable, even as Rasoulof’s final 20 minutes veers dangerously close to Hollywood thriller territory.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

Cillian Murphy follows his brilliant Oscar-winning performance in “Oppenheimer” with an equally stunning turn in “Small Things Like These”, a wrenching historical drama based on the 2021 best-selling and award-winning novella of the same name by Claire Keegan. The story is set against the backdrop of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries – institutions ran by Catholic orders with the complicity of the Irish government for over two centuries.

For those unfamiliar – in Ireland, many who were categorized as “fallen women” were sent to workhouses often posing as convents for “penance and rehabilitation”. Against their will, they were isolated from society and forced to work insufferable jobs, mostly in laundries, with no compensation. It wasn’t until 1993, when the bodies of 155 women were discovered in unmarked graves on the grounds of a Dublin convent, that the oppressive institutions were brought into the public eye.

Set in the mid-1980s, Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a loving and devoted father and a coal merchant who owns his own business, Furlong’s Coal & Fuel. Bill is a hard-working man who puts in long hours to support his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and their five daughters in the Irish town of New Ross.

Director Tim Mielants uses the strengths of Frank van den Eeden’s cinematography and Paki Smith’s production design to portray Bill’s lived-in and richly detailed blue-collar life. From the tight-quartered interiors of the Furlong home to Bill’s coal dust coated depot, a big effort is put into recreating a realistic representation. It’s one of the film’s many strengths.

While out delivering bags of coal, Bill makes his regular stop at a convent sitting on the outskirts of town. While there, he witnesses a distressed young woman being forced inside. It’s a troubling scene that clearly rattles Bill. Yet we’re left with the feeling that he’s not completely surprised. Over time we get the sense that not just Bill but most of the town are aware that something is going on at the convent. But the people are content with remaining quiet. They see it better to do nothing and stay on the right side of certain powerful people, namely Sister Mary (Emily Watson), the local Mother superior.

Much of the film focuses on Bill’s internal struggle with what he knows is happening and his feelings of complicity for staying silent. Mielants visualizes that struggle in a variety of ways including the image of Bill washing his hands. When arriving home each evening the first thing he does is go to the bathroom sink, fill it with water, take soap and a brush, and feverishly cleans his hands of the coal dust and grime. But over time his scrubbing gets more intense, a metaphor for his anguished efforts to cleanse himself of guilt.

Bill’s feelings are amplified by his own traumatic childhood which is shared through a series of well implemented flashbacks. There we see a young Bill (played by Louis Kirwan) forced to deal with the sudden death of his mother Sarah (Agnes O’Casey). There’s also the fear of what could happen to any of his five daughters if he gets on the wrong side of the convent. “It’s none of our business”, his wife contends, more out of anxiety than apathy.

But the naturally soft-hearted Bill reaches his breaking point after discovering a visibly shaken young woman (Zara Devlin) locked in the convent’s coal shed. Does he risk his family’s well-being and incur the wrath of the Sisters just for doing the right thing? What will his wife say? Will the community rise up and support him? Mielants doesn’t answer all of those questions, and the potential consequences for Bill leave us with a lingering sense of concern.

We live in a day where there is no shortage of anti-Catholic sentiment circulating in the form of entertainment. But that doesn’t mean the Catholic Church is above scrutiny, especially with its troubled history. Mielants maintains a razor-sharp and deeply human focus that never allows his film to turn into some agenda-driven hit piece. Instead, he has made a gripping character study about turning a blind eye in the face of horrendous institutional abuse. And it’s relayed through another brilliant Oscar-worthy turn from Cillian Murphy.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

There was a day when superhero movies were actually a rarity. There were no big blockbuster franchises or sprawling cinematic universes. Perhaps that’s one reason 1978’s “Superman: The Movie” was such a critical and box office success. Another reason was the film’s lead, a young relatively unknown Christopher Reeve. It was a star-making role for the Juilliard alumni that over time became both a blessing and a curse.

With “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story”, co-directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui examine the man behind the pop culture myth, exposing our penchant for idolizing characters while emphasizing what it means to be a true hero. For some, the documentary has the potential be a stirring introduction while others will see it as a moving reminder of what Christopher Reeve accomplished, endured, and overcame.

Bonhôte and Ettedgui tell Reeve’s story through interviews with his children, Will Reeve, Matthew Reeve, and Alexandra Reeve Givens. They also include some of Reeve’s acting contemporaries such as Susan Sarandon, Glen Close, and Jeff Daniels. The doc includes a wealth of archived footage and clips from old home movies. But ultimately it’s the heartfelt testimonies that offer the most insight and that give the movie its emotional weight.

“Super/Man” attempts to balance Reeve’s professional and personal lives, digging into his complicated family history while highlighting his near overnight ascent to global movie star status. With so much to cover, not everything gets the attention it needs. But Bonhôte and Ettedgui give us enough to get to picture. They tell us about his troubled relationship with his parents, mostly with his unsupportive father. We hear how he met Gae Exton, the mother of Matthew and Alexandra. We learn that five months after leaving her he met his future wife, Dana.

Professionally, we get snippets of his life as an off-Broadway actor and his eventual call to audition for the role of Superman where he beat out the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Jenner, and Neil Diamond (!!!). We see Reeves catapulted to super stardom with the success of “Superman: The Movie” and later desperate to get out from under its shadow. And there’s the tragedy that struck on May 27, 1995 when Reeve’s suffered a spinal injury that left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Much of the documentary focuses on the injury, its impact on Reeve and his family, and the resilience he showed to not only keep living but to use his situation as a means to promote disability awareness. Along the way, it stresses Dana’s unwavering care and support for her husband. She’s an essential part of Reeve’s story and a hero of an entirely different kind.

Bonhôte and Ettedgui have definitely done their homework and their movie’s overarching message is easy to grasp. But not all of their choices pan out. For example, their frequent bouncing back-and-forth on Reeve’s timeline hinders more than helps. But it doesn’t lessen the heartbreak or inspiration found of this real-life Superman story. “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” is now showing in select theaters.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

2022’s “Smile” was a surprise hit both with film critics and horror fans. The movie was kickstarted by a killer promotional campaign that saw the studio’s marketing team planting actors behind home plate at several Major League Baseball games where they would stare into the television cameras with blank maniacal smiles. It was terrific viral marketing meant to get the small budget feature noticed. Now the sequel, “Smile 2” is here and the studio is hoping to capture that same lightning.

“Smile” mixed psychological horror with the supernatural to deliver a genuinely creepy chiller with a nasty edge. “Smile 2” seeks to follow the same course with a bigger budget and more ambition. But even as it’s aiming higher and upping the ante, the sequel falls short of its predecessor in a number of hard to ignore ways.

Writer-director Parker Finn returns for “Smile 2” and begins his sequel with an intense opening that connects it with the first film. From there we’re taken to New York City where pop superstar Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is preparing for a global comeback tour. Her career was nearly ended due to drug and alcohol abuse which contributed to a highly publicized car crash that killed her boyfriend Paul.

Now clean and sober, Skye is hard at work promoting her upcoming tour at the behest of her mom/manager, Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt). But her comeback is threatened by lingering back pain from her car wreck. So she seeks out Lewis Fregoli (Lukas Gage), an old classmate and known drug dealer, in hopes of scoring some Vicodin to ease her pain. But upon arriving at Lewis’ apartment, Skye is shaken by his disturbing behavior which culminates in him killing himself right in front of her.

Rather than contact the police, a frightened Skye flees to avoid being implicated in Lewis’ death or drug dealing. But little does she know, there’s something much more sinister she needs to worry about. She begins having horrifying visions with many including people with big creepy smiles. Of course the first movie has already let us in on the secret. Skye is the new host of malevolent parasitic spirit that drives its victims to kill themselves. Better yet, it can is only be transmitted when the host commits suicide in front of someone else. Lewis had it and then passed it on to Skye.

The rest of the movie follows Skye as she’s tormented by the vicious spirit that no one else sees. As she’s mentally pushed to the brink, her visions intensify. And as they do, Finn twists our perception of what’s real and what’s an illusion. But even with that, “Smile 2” lacks the element of surprise which played a big part in the first film. This time around we know it’s an evil spirit; we know what it does; we know the only way to get rid of it.

Finn does throw in some pretty wicked body horror and things get especially gnarly in the final act. But at the same time he leans too heavily on lame and lazy jump scares that get more annoying as the movie progresses. And even though he tackles some compelling themes such as the lingering effects of trauma and our infatuation with fame and celebrity, the story drags on for too long and gets surprisingly sloppy in its final 15 minutes or so.

Naomi Scott deserves credit for pouring every bit of herself into the lead role. She completely sells Skye’s pop star status and impressively captures her psychological collapse. But much like the movie itself, her performance starts to wear you down. Watching her get ran through the wringer gets tiring as does listening to her scream “F~CK!!!” into the air over and over again. But those aren’t problems with Scott. They’re script issues which when considered as a whole is the biggest reason “Smile 2” falls short.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

“Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” Those words have echoed down the halls of comedy since they were first uttered by Chevy Chase on October 11, 1975. That’s when the immensely popular and long-running sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (then called NBC’s Saturday Night) made its small screen debut. And as they say, the rest is late-night television history.

With the aptly titled “Saturday Night”, director Jason Reitman attempts to recreate the chaotic 90 minutes leading up to SNL’s 1975 live debut. Reitman puts together a mammoth ensemble and tasks them with portraying an equally mammoth array of SNL cast members, show writers, NBC executives, comedians, musicians, and personalities.

The origin story of Saturday Night Live is a fascinating one. NBC was in the middle of an contract squabble with the king of light-night TV Johnny Carson. Since 1965, the network had been running re-runs of Carson’s mega-popular The Tonight Show on Saturday and Sunday nights. After nearly ten years, Carson requested they be pulled so that he could use them during the week allowing the host more time off. Much to the chagrin of several affiliates, NBC puts a young Lorne Michaels in charge of creating a show to fill the Saturday night time slot.

Reitman (who also co-wrote the script with Gil Kenan) begins his movie 90 minutes before the show is set to go live. On the 17th floor of NBC Studios at Rockefeller Plaza, creator and producer Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle) scrambles to get everyone and everything ready to go. But that’s easier said than done. His rambunctious cast of relatively unknown twenty-somethings are impossible to corral. Scripts for sketches remain unwritten. There are constant technical difficulties. And he still can’t give away enough free tickets to fill a studio audience.

But worst of all, he has network executives breathing down his neck, most notably NBC’s Vice President of Talent Relations David Tebet (played by a terrific Willem Dafoe). Tebet is anxious to pull the plug on Lorne’s show and continue pumping out Carson re-runs. But Lorne has an ally in Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), the Director of Weekend Late Night Programming. Dick works as a middle-man between the network and Lorne, deflecting a lot of the heat and doing what he can to save the show. It’s work that Lorne doesn’t immediately appreciate.

Reitman plunges us headfirst into the moment-to-moment chaos, leaning on a beat-the-clock tension and even incorporating a reoccurring clock to remind us that time is the biggest enemy. Obviously we know how it ultimately ends. And considering that the entire movie is about the mayhem, the film’s big final moment comes together a little too neatly. But Reitman’s crisp dialogue and swift pacing keeps us on our toes and genuinely invested in what’s at stake.

But it’s the wealth of talent behind the supporting cast that gives the movie its energy. With so many involved, no one outside of LaBelle gets a ton of screen time. But that works in the film’s favor. There’s no overexposure and it allows Reitman to bounce back-and-forth across the studio and highlight the overwhelming stress and sheer pandemonium.

The acting is strong throughout and there are some uncanny physical likenesses that only enhance the performances. The SNL cast members are especially good with Cory Michael Smith playing Chevy Chase, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Kim Matula playing Jane Curtin, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, and Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman.

And that’s just a small sample of the people we meet. Rachel Sennott is outstanding as Rosie Shuster. Nicholas Braun is a lot of fun playing both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman. Tommy Dewey lets loose as Lorne’s pompous and abrasive head writer Michael O’Donoghue. Jon Batiste gets some good scenes playing Billy Preston while also composing the movie’s score. And J. K. Simmons is a blast as Milton Berle.

As “Saturday Night” blitzes forward we’re treated to a number of nostalgic callbacks that SNL enthusiasts will love. And sprinkled throughout are some pretty big laughs, most of which are organically generated by the show’s anarchic spirit. It still only feels like we’re getting a sketch of the behind-the-scenes experience. Reitman conflates and exaggerates while offering practically no buildup to his fairly skimpy plot. But none of that keeps us from being swept up in the creative madness, the revolving door of characters, and the sheer force of will that birthed a revolutionary show that’s still going today. “Saturday Night” is in theaters now.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

Artificial Intelligence thrillers are popping up left and right, and with the current A.I. discussions intensifying, there’s no reason to believe they’ll be slowing down anytime soon. Case in point – “Subservience”, the latest film to explore the subject in genre form. Its story is built around a simple and well-worn premise (mankind creates A.I. only for A.I. to turn on mankind). But it’s the fun it has within that premise that makes “Subservience” an entertaining time-passer.

“Subservience” is directed by S.K. Dale and written by the duo of Will Honley and April Maguire. It stars Megan Fox who recently worked with Dale on 2021’s “Till Death”. Here they take on an especially hot topic, throwing in some fairly insightful commentary, while mostly sticking close to a familiar genre formula. But Dale’s crisp pacing and keen execution along with Fox’s shrewdly modulated performance gives the film a chance to become a bonafide cult classic.

Michele Morrone plays Nick, a construction worker, happily married husband, and father of two. His world is turned upside down after his wife Maggie (a very good Madeline Zima) suffers a heart attack. As she remains hospitalized and in need of a transplant, Nick works hard to care for their young daughter Isla (Matilda Firth) and toddler son Max (Jude Allen Greenstein). And all while keeping the house, working a full-time job, and being supportive to his ailing wife. It doesn’t take long before he’s overwhelmed.

Needing help, Nick and the kids visit a showroom belonging to Kobol Tec, a company that manufactures and sells state-of-the-art humanoid robots. Isla picks out a home model they name Alice (Fox) who specializes in cooking, cleaning and childcare while possessing the ability to mimic human emotion. She quickly becomes an asset at home, fixing meals, cleaning, reading bedtime stories to Isla, and even making household repairs.

But things take a turn when the beautiful but creepy Alice begins bypassing certain protocols in her effort to make Nick’s life “easier”. As a result of her newly developed jealousy, Alice takes on a more maternal role with the kids in Maggie’s absence and even tries to fill her place as Nick’s wife. To no surprise this leads to some discomforting tension, especially after Maggie receives her transplant and is finally able to come home.

As Alice goes from concerning to a full-blown menace, the movie’s messaging is pretty clear. But the film throws in a few other nuggets to emphasize its point. We get a storyline involving Nick’s job where his entire crew is replaced by more “cost-effective” sims. Nick is left on as their foreman but it’s a conflict he can’t get past. We also see where sims have taken other human jobs from bartending to licensed surgeons. I wish there was more world-building to potentially enhanced the commentary, but what we get is pretty effective.

I don’t want to make the mistake of overselling it. There is a lot in “Subservience” that we have seen before and its predictability kills any suspense. And much of what we see is pretty silly, nothing more than the ending which evolves into a Terminator knock-off. Yet the movie never loses your attention and remains entertaining throughout. It’s an economic and focused thriller that has just enough of a human pulse mixed in with its genre dressing. And honestly, that was a lot more than I was expecting. “Subservience” is now available on VOD.

VERDICT – 3 STARS